If you did not particularly enjoy the last Breakthough article, fair warning – this one might not be your cup of tea either. We’re going to get down and dirty with bits n’ bytes and other assorted forms of electro-geekery that are not everyone’s idea of fun. Feel free to click through to read about fast cars and Formula 1.
In the aforementioned piece, we told the story of how ‘computers’ (or to be more accurate, microprocessors and their military-wing brethren, microcontrollers) somewhat inevitably infiltrated the motor car in the late 1970s. And as they did, they brought with them the question of ‘data’. In the good old days, data was pretty simple – is the boot lid open, or not? A simple plunger switch, with a wire going back to a bulb in the dash panel, and we were good to go. 0 – boot closed, circuit open, no light. 1 – boot open, circuit closed, bulb lights up, driver gets out and swears that these modern bloody ’70s kids must all have been born in a barn as he slams it closed. Everyone was happy.
But as we rolled into the 1980s, trouser legs narrowed as shoulder pads widened and data in cars started to become an issue. New-fangled computers were everywhere as I grew up. Music started to be dominated by Roland synths. Kids who used to ask Santa for Raleigh Choppers and Space Hoppers now wrote to the Big Man for ZX Spectrums or Commodore 64s. And cars started to get more complex as names like Intel and Motorola crept in where once Lucas, Prince of Darkness and Marelli reigned supreme.
