#tech nostalgia

Nothing says "revolutionary technology" like a man in a waistcoat who hasn't seen a bathtub since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Here we see "Ben" smugly presenting the Franklin ACE 1000, a machine so boldly "compatible" with the Apple II that the legal department probably had a collective heart attack the moment this photo was snapped.

The placement of the actual apple on the computer is the ultimate 1980s power move, it’s the corporate equivalent of "I’m not touching you!" while hovering a finger an inch from Apple’s copyright lawyers. They are bragging about 64K of RAM and upper and lower case letters as if they’ve just cracked the Enigma code. In 1776, Ben wanted to fly a kite in a lightning storm; in 1982, he just wanted to run VisiCalc without paying Steve Jobs a royalty. It’s a classic tale of American innovation: if you can’t beat 'em, dress up like a Founding Father and clone 'em.

JUPITER ACE (1982)

the home computer that refused to speak BASIC

Every single home computer in 1982 ran BASIC. Every single one except this little white box from Cambridge.

the origin story

Two engineers walk out of Sinclair Research and decide to build their own machine. Steve Vickers wrote the ZX Spectrum's BASIC. Richard Altwasser designed its motherboard. Their verdict on BASIC? They weren't fans.

"Comparing Forth to Basic is like comparing a Gothic cathedral to a mud hut." — Steve Vickers, 1982

They named their company Jupiter Cantab, rented a spare room in Altwasser's house in Cambridge, and got to work.

what made it weird

The Ace ran FORTH — a language where you stack tiny building blocks called "words" on top of each other. Alien syntax, steep learning curve, and absolutely beautiful to the right kind of mind. It ran 10× faster than BASIC on identical hardware. The machine had a Z80A chip, 3KB of RAM, and cost £89.95.

No colour graphics. No software library to speak of. Just raw, elegant speed.

the rise and fall

April 1982 ZX-Spectrum launches. Vickers & Altwasser quietly start planning their exit.

September 1982 Jupiter Ace goes on sale. Built in a spare room.

December 1982 Stocked by Laskys and Debenhams. Christmas boom. Optimism.

July 1983 Altwasser quits to be with his newborn. The writing is on the wall.

November 1983 Jupiter Cantab folds. 14 months of existence. £140K in debt.

why it failed (and why that's sad)

The market wanted games. Kids wanted BASIC. The Ace had monochrome graphics, almost no third-party software, and a language that required you to think differently. It wasn't a bad machine — it was a machine built for a world that didn't exist yet.

"We sold a lot of machines to the few hundred Forth enthusiasts — and that was it." — Steve Vickers, looking back

The thing about this movie is that it seems most of the locations were real.. They shot them via "guerilla filmmaking" methods. So that scene is probably a real arcade they had at the time.

BTW I've heard in recent years this hotel has been turned into apartments for homeless people.

Side Note:

In this shot I can almost swear I see a creepy guy dressed in brown with a black sack over his head standing in shadow in the arcade behind Reese here..