AHC: A British Silicon Valley

Watching David Mitchell on QI lament the fact that Britain never did anything productive with its lead on computer technology at the close of World War Two got me thinking; could Bletchley Park have developed into the impetus for a vibrant, pioneering British IT industry? What would it have taken for such an outcome to occur?
 
AFAIK the British IT industry is quite vibrant. Our computer games industry is second only really to Japan. Also there is 'Silicon Glen' in Scotland, not on the scale of Silicon Valley admittedly.
 
Be that as it may, I'm more thinking of what would happen if Britain took the lead in developing computers and information technology; the big breakthroughs being developed there rather than in California, and what would need to happen for such a situation to come about.
 
There are plenty of small British firms involved in IT, the Cambridge area is known as " Silicon Fen" as there is a cluster of firms associated with the university. The problem is they find it very hard to get development capital as the City of London is obsessed with quick returns rather than the long term investment necessary to get the full potential of the technology, therefore they have to seek assistance from abroad which usually leads to the technology being purchased by large manufacturers and going abroad.

Maybe if Sir Clive Sinclair had had a bit more business acumen and had continued to develop the Sinclair ZX instead of developing the joke that was the C5 he could have created a British Apple
 
Be that as it may, I'm more thinking of what would happen if Britain took the lead in developing computers and information technology; the big breakthroughs being developed there rather than in California, and what would need to happen for such a situation to come about.
Well as far as I'm aware up until the 60s and possibly even the early 70s the UK was more than capable of keeping up with the US and the rest of the world in regards to computer development, it was only after then that they started to lag behind the leaders. Perhaps if Geoffrey Dummer develops his ideas for integrated circuits a couple of years later than in our timeline so that he doesn't share his ideas at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, the need for them is more obvious so he's able to get more official backing the first micochips are produced in the UK. Of course the UK managed to throw away the lead in a number of fields in the post war decades so that's no guarantee of success and I don't know the history well enough to make any decent technical suggestions on what to change.
 
I should think it goes a bit further back. It is also a question about capital and market.

The "modern" computer companies evolved from a lot of things. NCR was founded in 1884 and was focused on cash registers. The market and the amount of money created alloved it to grow into the electrical era and later into electronics and "real" computers. Not that many british companies had this ty pe of background (and vision for that matter).

IBM came out of different invention in the same time period (incorporated as IBM in 1911). In essence, it had a focus on banking very early on. Again the market in US was bigger than the British market and the amount of money generated got it into "real" computers.

AT&T coming from the "mini-Bell's" is another example. The innovations for getting PABX's and in the early days - switchboards - to go, was bleading edge (still is, btw).

I think it is the industrial scale that determined the US lead rather than separate innovations.

Prior to WWII, I don't think UK had any major focus on industried leading into electronics outside of some "funny" inventions and inventors.

I don't think they had the mney to fund anything either.

Post WWII, again, broke.

ICL was a range of mergers of different technologies, but again, I don't think the home market was big enough for ICL to grow cash and it lacked in international recognition.

(and on a different note: Silicon Valley in UK? next to M25? Reading? Oxford? the success of Silicon Valley is also the synergy among all the companies sitting there. I can't see a similar concentration of technology indiustries in the UK).

Ivan
 
Top