Dragon Data Advert - July 1983

This is another of those adverts popular at the time which like to suggest that anyone over 20 couldn't possibly know how to use a computer.

It was largely true. Before the home micro explosion, computers were the preserve of hardcore hobbyists or men with beards - and it was mostly men - tightly controlling access to room-sized machines in office blocks.

Home computers democratised access, and it was often children who picked it up most quickly and then taught their parents.

This advert appeared shortly before Dragon went through one of its many financial crises, which this time involved an additional investor injection of £2.5 million, triggered by falling demand for the Dragon 32.

Dragon's chairman and managing director, Tony Clarke, would resign on the 2nd of September 1983 at the same time as Dragon issues a press statement detailing a rescue plan mounted by major shareholder Prutech, the venture-capital arm of Prudential Assurance.

As part of the rescue, Prudential's Chief Executive Dr. Derek Allam took over the chairman role whilst Derek Morgan, of PA Management Consultants took over as acting MD on temporary secondment. Dragon's own Richard Wadman remained as marketing direcor.

Mettoy, the loss-making manufacturer of Corgi toys and the company that set up Dragon in the late summer of 1982, before selling it to Prutech in the November of the same year, found itself unable to contribute to the rescue and saw its own share price collapse from 17p to 2p.

Despite that, Mettoy retained a 15.5% share with other shareholders Prutech at 42%, the Welsh Development Agency with 23%, National Water Council at 8.6%, Dragon's executives with 2.3 and two others at 4.3% each.

Mettoy had also provided the first hint that Dragon was in serious trouble when it was forced, under Stock Market rules, to announce that its "associate company Dragon Data had suffered a set-back"^[1].

Dragon had come from nowhere to briefly become one the UK's top-selling micros by the end of 1982, having shifted 50,000 units.

However, fierce competition from Sinclair's Spectrum and Commodore's 64 - at £125 and £199 respectively compared to the Dragon 32's £175 - combined with comparatively lower specs and an inability or unwillingness to reduce the price, meant that the Dragon was struggling to survive^[2]

Meanwhile, Prutech was hedging its bets in technology as it had recently invested substantially in new UK robotics company Colne Robotics, based in Twickenham.

Colne, headed by former investment analyst turned turned medical instrumentation designer John Reekie, had already produced around 2,000 of its Armdroid 1 robots since its launch in September 1981 and had recently launched the Zeaker micro-turtle and Colvis computer-vision system.

Armed with its 35% Prutech investment, Colne had also just set up a division in Florida to produce the Armdroid 1 for the US market. An optimistic Reekie commented "These machines are the first signs of the robot summer - it is going to be an enormous industry".

Competition included Heathkit, which was selling its 18"-high "Hero" robot at the rate of 140 a month, and Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell's Androbot, which had the £630 Topo on offer^[3].