Okay, we're live. We're here at one o'clock rock. Well, we'll have to one o'clock rock. Here on Think Tech in the name of this show is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And the name of our episode is Electric Vehicles in America. And we got real authority on that. You know, this is Ed Kemper. He's originally an attorney, still an attorney. He's always an attorney. Still trying to practice. Still trying to get it down. But more than that, he has created and is doing now for years and years Island Driver TV on OC-16. And he's been writing about cars, including electric cars, and the Star Advertiser every Friday. So if you want to know more, check him out on OC-16 or in the Star Advertiser. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Great to have you here. Good to be here. So, you know, we talk about electric cars all the time because it's part of multimodal transportation. It's part of the future of Hawaii, at least according to everyone involved in clean energy, because it is clean. And not to say that the source has to be clean, but one day if the source is clean, the whole continuum is clean. Correct. So we're interested in electric vehicles. So you follow cars. I know you do. You love cars. Yes. It's boys toys kind of thing. I know it is. I know your secret. And so I'd like to know what's on the market now that's worth talking about in terms of electric cars. Cars that are available to me that I might actually consider buying and using and incorporating into my life. Well, let's go through a little history. We have various vehicles that are on the road now that started as hybrids. Now to understand a hybrid, it's essentially we have some batteries and we have a gasoline motor. If it's fully charged, then you go along usually at a modest pace with electricity. And then the gas motor cuts on when you need it. So that resulted in gas mileage in the 40 to 50 mile per gallon range. Everybody knows about the various Toyota Priuses and there's quite a few different models of those that have been around for quite a few years. Popular car. Popular car. But here's what's on the horizon for the manufacturers. It's called corporate average fuel economy. It's a federal standard. And by 2025, essentially the mileage you're getting now is going to double. It has to double. You say, well, how are you going to do that? There's really only two ways. More and more hybrids and more and more electric vehicles. Let me give you the quandary that the manufacturers have. A perfect example of this is the best-selling vehicle in the United States is a Ford truck, the F-150 and the series after that. They sell 70,000 a month, which is one every 32 seconds or something like that, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Is this a great country or what? Here's their problem. The fuel mileage in a typical truck is not very good. And if they're going to get up to where they're talking about at 40 miles per gallon, they have to take some steps to deal with that. Ford has already done that to a degree. They changed from steel to an aluminum body. See, at the car show, yeah. Saved 700 pounds. Better fuel mileage. They go from a V8, which they still have, but also now they're in V6s, turbos. Puts out the same horsepower, better gas mileage. That'll get you so far. The real answer is Ford is going to have to do more and more electric vehicles to offset a low mileage of the trucks. So when you say average, you mean average among the fleet? Among the fleet. Corporate average. So Ford Motor Company, which is Ford and Lincoln, for all is going to have to have 40 miles per gallon plus. So the way to do that is high bridge, which Ford has and also electric vehicles. And you say, well, how does that work? The EPA has come up with a way of converting electric vehicle mileage into the equivalent of fuel mileage. So the typical electric vehicle maybe gets a hundred miles per gallon, although we're not talking about gallons of fuel. And you offset against the ones that are getting 20 or 30 or whatever, and then you get the average pulled up so you meet the standards. So it's a formula. Yes, 20, 25 is when we have to meet this goal. That's nine years away. That is correct. So electric vehicles are really the prime answer because their equivalent fuel mileage is in the hundreds. 105, 107, whatever the number is. So if you have a Prius, you're probably in the 50s range. There's a plug-in Prius, which means it has more batteries. And its range is even further. But the next step, as I said, is pure electric vehicles. There's some halfway steps that occurred. There's a Chevy Volt, not the Volt. The Volt is the older one and the Volt is just coming out. Right. So the Volt has a little motor in it and lots of batteries. So it runs on electric power most of the time. When the computer sense that I'm quote, running out of battery power, this little motor comes on and then shoots used directly into the batteries. So it'll go 45, 50 miles on electricity. And if it says and you can still drive it all the way across the country without ever trying to charge it because it is a plug-in electric. So next step is going to be from Chevrolet is the Bolt. Now the Bolt has a range allegedly of 234 miles before the Volt. You have to recharge it. Very competitive in the marketplace. That on this island you could go anywhere. Yeah. No anxiety at all. No, none, no anxiety at all. Other manufacturers are doing likewise. Volkswagen is going to come out with one with that kind of range. Take a step back. The Nissan Leaf, which is probably one of the more popular electric wheels, probably has a range right now of 70 miles or so. I should tell a story. I test drove one of them. I picked it up in Kandiyoi. I'm going up over the poly. It started with 64 miles left of range.  I said, uh-oh, am I going to make it home? Go get to the tunnel, start going down the poly because it's a long downhill to town.  It recharges just going downhill on that. How interesting. Yes. Now obviously when it went the other way, it didn't sort of the opposite. You know, the net effect on that trip was terrific. Yeah, it went up there effectively free. Yeah, that's right. So anyway, so we're moving to the long range electric vehicles and we're doing so because technology has changed, the batteries are getting better, the amount of storage area is not as big as it had to be. Now of course everybody has to talk about Tesla, of course. And they currently have what I would call high-end electric vehicles. They started about $70,000. They have pretty good range. I shouldn't tell this story on myself. I test drove one of them and this particular one was the high-end dual motor all-wheel drive and you push a button, I think it was called insane on the dash. It's just insane. I thought you said insane. It is insane. Alright. Or worse to that effect.  I said, you know, I've driven race cars, I can handle this. Holy moly. You can stop on the accelerator because it's all wheel drive. There's no wheel spin. And in an electric vehicle, the torque is there instantly as opposed to a gas engine, which takes time. The acceleration was phenomenal. 3.2 seconds from 0 to 60. And now they have one that's even more powerful. Oh my goodness. But you know, $110,000 or whatever it costs. But it's very quiet. It has a very long range. But now the big one's coming. The so-called Model 3 Tesla. And it has a range of 233 miles, allegedly. Hasn't been built yet. It still looks Tesla, which is different from most cars. And they have 300,000 deposits of $1,000 apiece. For just get your name on the list so when they start producing them, you'll get one. What does that come to? American money? $300 million. That'll start your car company. Right. Well, what Tesla did was they bought the old General Motors Toyota plant in California. That wasn't being used. It was going out of business, essentially. And it's a million square feet or a million two. And I actually asked the Tesla guy, I said, well, I mean, how big is that? He says, well, we can run 5k running races inside the factory. And we still have room. I said, oh, okay, so you'll have enough room to build the Model 3. Yes. So you can see the interest there. And I think it's because, first of all, it sells for $35,000 or maybe $38,000. There's currently a federal tax credit of $7,500. And assuming you have income tax equal to $7,500, you can use that to offset the price. But this is only an offset credit. It's not a refundable credit. You get cash no matter what. Right. So you have to have a certain amount of income paying that amount of tax in order to offset that number. That's the way it's been. Yeah, right. So the concern, although among Tesla people, is they're using up the credit already with their more upper end models. And by the time the 3 comes along, is that credit going to be used up? Because there's a cap on how much it can be permitted. It's a number of cars that the manufacturer makes. Now, the Chevy Volt, they don't have that problem because they don't make that. General Motors doesn't make that many electric vehicles. Big difference. Yes. Because Tesla, that's all they make. And General Motors makes everything under the sun. And of course the Volt, Chevy Volt, you get the credit. And when the Volt comes out, which is pure electric, 234 mile range, people will be able to take advantage of that. And the pricing is roughly the same as the Model 3. Now, I think people will still, I still want it because it has an unusual look to it on the Model 3. It says Tesla, and I think there's a certain cache. As opposed to a Chevy, no offense to Tesla. Cars in America and the world, it's all about cache, isn't it? That's right. It's your persona. That's right. I suspect that the acceleration time in both of these electric vehicles, because they have so many batteries, is going to be quite good. It tends to drop off a little bit as you get into the higher realm, 70, 80 miles an hour, but who cares? Most people don't. But let me also say this. In Hawaii, of course, people say, well, most of our electricity, unless you have solar panels, comes from oil. Yes, that's true, but we're stepping in the future where we're going to be less and less dependent upon that. But also look at it this way. You're taking your car to the local gas station to get gas. Think how many steps occurred before you get that gas into your tank. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a big machine pumping the oil out, pumping into trucks or pipes, shipping it to a tanker. Tanker comes here, tanker offloads it to a fuel storage area. It's converted to gasoline. Think how much energy is used in all those steps. Then it's put on another truck, sent to the gas station, and then has to be pumped out of that into your vehicle. Whereas electricity, the lines are already up, just plug it in. Or if you have a home with solar panels, you're off the grid. Because you can plug it in at night and put that energy back into the vehicle off you go. And for that matter, as you said, when we get to the point where we're closing 100% renewables, these cars are all effectively working on renewables at a great moment. This has got to change things. It's interesting that the big manufacturers, not Tesla now, they're manufacturing all kinds of cars. And they love fossil cars and they have all kinds of great new technology, which you see on your show and which you examine. It's very impressive. But in the future we're going to be talking to electric cars on this. And it just strikes me that Tesla doing say 300,000 to start and then many more than that if it works, which I think it probably will work. That's going to change everything, isn't it? Because then the big manufacturers are going to say, gee, we better get a product up here. They're also being forced to do that because of the CAF standard. They're going to have to do it. Now, admittedly you have lots of trucks which are designed not for the cow or just passengers to and from work. And they have to have an offset on cars that get very high equivalent mileage, as I explained. So there definitely is going to be a big push to electric and hybrids. Hybrids still have a role to play because they can be in the 50s or so in the gas mileage range. When we come back from this break, I'd like to talk about how it's going to affect not only the marketplace but our lives and our society here in Hawaii and across the country and the world. That's Ed Kemper. He does Island Driver TV on OC16. He does a column in the Star Votizer all about cars. Here on Hawaii, the state of clean energy, we'll be right back in one minute. You'll see. Aloha, I'm Carl Kampania, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers, our producers, our conversion technologies, our investors, and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Okay, we're back. We're live with Ed Kemper, an expert on cars, Island Driver TV and OC16 and a column in the Star Votizer for years and years. We're talking about electric cars today, electric cars in America. So you've examined and told us, which I mean a really very authoritative discussion about how these cars are evolving right now and why. But what's the effect? What's the effect in terms of people buying them of dealers or maybe direct manufacturer type sales happening? What's the effect on highways? The effect on our society? I know a lot of this is speculative but I'd be really interested in your thoughts about where we're going on this, Ed. Well, interestingly there was an article in the paper not too long ago about, okay, we start shifting to electric vehicles and we're not going to the gas station and pumping gas where there's attacks that the state government gets or the city gets. Interesting point. For roads, how are we going to get the revenue to keep our roads going? Interesting point. So here's their theory. You get your car expected? Okay, your last inspection, so your mileage was X, let's say 20,000 and now it's 30,000. We're going to assess you attacks based upon the mileage. And I think that's going to have to happen. It's not unfair. No, I mean you're using the road and here we have proof of it. You should pay your fair share to keep that road. It's like the tax on trucks on the mainland states have tax on miles. The trucks travel because every mile deteriorates the highway. Right, so that's one issue that's certainly going to come up. I think also people don't realize this just as a matter of noise. Electric vehicles are essentially silent and you don't have that engine exhaust noise potentially from regular vehicles all the time. So we may end up with traffic that's quieter. Admittedly there's still tire noise in the car traveling through the air but overall as we shift more and more to the electric vehicle there'll be a somewhat quieter sense. And that's dangerous. I can't hear him coming. That's correct. In parking lots there's been some talk about having a noise maker in the vehicle. So at low speeds it lets you know that the car is present. And actually there's a Kia electric vehicle that had that noise maker.  It's easy to do. It's not an expensive thing. But here this is only low speed stuff. Just once you get going. It reminds me when we were kids we rode our bicycles and the bicycles didn't make any noise. So we put a playing card on the spokes with a closed pin made it sound like a noisy motorcycle. You're a high tech guy. I can tell that. You heard it here on Think Tech. But I think also even though we sort of have this downturn in the solar panel business because of various other features I think more important people will say okay if I'm on an electric car I might as well have solar power in my home. Because then I'm really completely off the grid in all aspects. And I've noticed a lot of the Tesla people because they're high-end vehicles they'll have solar panels in their home. They can afford it. It's a high-end family.  I mean it isn't as if you're just throwing money against the wall and it falls down and that's it.  Sure. It's a great connection. But let me ask you this first batteries will get better. Now there's huge pressure to have them get better. And in fact there's a substance called graphene. Graphene is one layer of carbon atoms. And if you layer that up using that graphene layer you can have a battery that's much more efficient than any battery today. And there are thousands of science that's working on this because it's a holy ground. I think I've heard about that. It'll happen. It will happen. It'll change cars. It'll change all these cars we're talking about. And so what's going to happen is we're going to need less charging because the battery will be more effective. And then we have an improvement in the quality which is also happening of the solar panels. So maybe you could make a self-fulfilling system. A self-supplying system with a flat roof or relatively speaking with solar panels on that high efficiency, high efficiency battery, the whole thing runs without any external force at all. What do you think? Possible. And let me tell you this. Over time the batteries have gotten better already because the range has already been extended and the time to recharge has been cut down.  I mean and that leaf that I talked about earlier, they have a high energy machine in 30 minutes, 80% charged. Now admittedly you've got to buy this gadget to do it. And it costs some money. A lot of people would pay for that because they love their cars and they love not having range anxiety and all that stuff. Well, and also that particular device will become less expensive as they produce more of them and the technology changes. Now Tesla is building a, I don't know how many billion dollar factory in Reno, Nevada to build batteries along with Panasonic. And that's not only for their vehicles but also for storage of electricity in homes because we're having this problem in Hawaii already. That is, there's no, you can't get your credit back from the Echo because... Determination of net energy metering. So people are going to buy storage batteries and they'll be able to store their energy, plug it into their vehicle a perfect deal for Tesla because a lot of them are Tesla storage units. All this is connected. You know the car no pun intended by that connected the car No I didn't mean that but thank you. Well it's fine. I'll take your pun. But you know it's connected in the sense that you work on the batteries you work on the solar and it helps you not only with the cars it helps you with your house and everything sort of connects. But what it really says is that there's technology out there that can disconnect you with the utility and with the grid. You might, I mean who knows in ten years time we might be able to be completely independent. Car, house, only our stuff. Well I think not everybody because you have to afford it. And also you think of condominiums a lot of them now have no place to plug in your vehicle. It's very expensive to get a charging station for you and your vehicle and condo. Now there is a mandate I think if there's an X number of parking stalls then you have to have so many places where you can charge but for most smaller condominiums no. But I think in the future there may be changes in the law concerning that. Yes. And there may be pressure on condo associations. Hey, hook it up. Or vendors may come along and say I'll put it in because I want the revenue that's going to result when people plug into this particular system. Yeah so I'll hold it and I'll lease it to you or I'll charge you in case of how much juice flows through it. Right. So you put your credit card in, it reads it, well I've done that at the Davies building. Right down here they have one and I had an electric vehicle and I said well I'm going to try this. So I came in, plugged it in, put my credit card in and it gave me so many hours or whatever it was. It wasn't very expensive. That opens up the next part of our discussion and that is this is going to change the business model. I mean the business models are changing already. If you look at fossil cars a few years ago nobody leased fossil cars. Now little by little that's the way they marketed. I mean it's extraordinary you listen to ad after ad on television. I mean in the breaks between the debates. I mean because that's high advertising revenue right there. Right. And you see for every single car you don't get the price. You get the monthly lease payment. That's what you get. Changing. Well there's an advantage to leasing and that's this. The financing is based upon what the cost of the vehicle is and its residual value as opposed to the entire cost of the vehicle. So your monthly payments are less. And of course the manufacturers can then say okay we're going to charge zero interest and make those payments even less which are really they're subsidizing the price. You say oh my god I might as well buy a new car because and then at the end of the lease you have the following options. Give it back to the manufacturer or the dealer. They take it away or you can buy it at the residual value and if the value is actually higher on the marketplace you can then sell it and make a profit. My partner used to do that with his Ford Ranger trucks. After three years he would usually find out this truck is more valuable than the residual and then sell it. Yeah make a few bucks. But all of this is in play now and I think as electric cars take more and more of the market and they will in the next few years because of this 2025 standards and other factors that will attract people even macho people even Ford F-150 people we're going to have more on the roads. We're going to have more dealers trying to figure out more ways to get them to us and to change the model about buying them, leasing them, you know buying leasing, exchanging batteries. All these things are in play. It's a great time to be on the road isn't it? We can only benefit by this. Well it's interesting we used to call people that worked in the service department mechanics you know because they would take a tool and do whatever. Now they're technicians because vehicles are run by computers and all they do now is plug it into some big screen thing and it'll tell you what's wrong with it. So there's where we're going. Definitely computerization is taking over not only the vehicle itself but the repair of it and you know when you talk about electric vehicles you have a little dinky motor maybe yay big yay long very simple unlike a reciprocating engine that has all these parts going every which way and there you have oil in there and all that other stuff and there's no transmission in electric vehicles it's just one gear simple the problem in the expense is of course the batteries which are high tech but as I said over time it's going to be less and less expensive. Considering all these things there's your camera over there address the people tell them what they need to do now the ones who don't have electric cars how should they plan their future around cars given these changes I think if you have a home you should investigate solar panels not only for your own benefit at home but also ultimately for your vehicles because that way you save lots of money and even though the electric vehicle may be initially a little more expensive so a federal credit for many of them you should look at it that way now obviously I think eventually trucks minivans SUVs are going to be more and more either hybrid or electric so you might as well go down that avenue because that's where we're going absolutely unequivocally that's where we're going in and you know what I'd like you to come back on from time to time if you can spare time from OC16 come and tell us how it goes because it's a moving target that's Ed Kemper, Hawaii driver island driver TV and OC16 and writes for the star advertiser on cars every Friday and we have been honored to have him here in our show about clean energy in Hawaii. Thank you so much Ed. Thank you


Proudly we hail! From New York City where the American stage begins, here is another program with a cast of outstanding players. Public service time has been made available by this station for your Army and your Air Force to bring you this story as Proudly we hail Davy Crockett is entitled Davy Crockett. It's not the whole story of Davy Crockett I don't think anyone could do that because Davy Crockett is a legend. A legend as powerful and colorful and exciting as the legend of America itself. Our first act curtain will rise in just a moment, but first America looks up to her men in the sky. Yes, our country looks up to the young men thundering their way to new glory in the skies. There's is a task held in high esteem by the entire nation. You are needed to swell their ranks and can do so by enrolling now in the aviation cadet training program of the United States Air Force. If you're between the ages of 19 and 26 and a half, have had two or more years of college and are otherwise qualified, visit your nearest United States Army and United States Air Force recruiting station and ask about the aviation cadet training program. Do it today. And now your Army and your Air Force present the Proudly we hail production Davy Crockett American. Davy Crockett was one of the most colorful and romantic characters that enlivened our American past. It's natural to link his name with the Alamo, for it was there he fought and died with that gallon little band of Texans.  Soldier, hunter, writer, statesman, humorist, and orator.  Let's travel back to the time of Davy Crockett. The time he went down the Red River on a steamboat to Nagadoches. Step right up gentlemen. Step right up. Let's see if the hand is quicker than the eye. Now watch the thimbles. Watch them carefully. All right. Under which thimble lies the beat. Are you there, stranger? Can you tell me why, why is sure, that one right there? Why, stranger, you got the eyes of a cougar. Focus your gleaming orbs. Watch carefully. Now which one? That one there. Never seen the likes of you. Now, what do you say we make it sport? Say, uh, shillin'? Well, uh, I don't mind if we do. All right, now here we go. Watch close now. Want to take a chance? I never gamble, sir. Principled against me. Oh, I see. Well, I have my sentiments to a notch, but this is not gambling by no means. A little innocent pastime. Nothing more. Near clean me out. Ah, now, stranger, just because you lost the light in them cougar eyes of yours, don't blame cartons, thimble rig for your misfortune. What do you say? Take a trifle? I don't care how small, just for the fun of the thing. Well, I'm principle against betting money, but I don't mind going in for dinner for the present company. I'm hungry as a wolf in a blizzard. Well, sir, I admire your principles and to show that I play with these here thimbles just for the fun of it, I'll take that bet. Either one or the other of us is going in to stand to feed for this here group. Now, now, the bean is under the middle thimble. Hold there. I'll lift the thimble. One the bet. But I don't care if I give you another chance, even though I'm a whole hog temperate man, we'll make it drinks for all presents. I'm sure you'll win.  Since that's the case, it'll be a little better than picking your pocket, so I'll let it alone. Well, now, I don't mind running the risk. But I do. Since I always let well enough alone, I've had enough glory for one day. Let's all go to the table. Eat at your expense. Well, sir, might I ask your name? You might. I'm Colonel David Crockett, Tennessee. Well, it'll be struck by lightning and rolled in a keg of bar grease. Well, you could eat the way we all have, not have to pay for it. That's a mighty fine meal. Now, we owe it all to you. Well, Colonel, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Kind of rests uneasy in my stomach, though. Maybe get your pocketbook mixed up with your stump. Well, poorly. That's how I feel. Poorly. Gentlemen! Gentlemen! In just a few minutes, I can use the help of any man who veins and welcomes a little toss. I've sent one of my men ashore to buy provisions. Well, the goods thought we might quite naturally accrue one. That's too enough, Colonel. The whole thing took place at the Silver Bear. It stands right plumb on the river's edge. We're skin of the devil this side of the Mississippi. How about we hold our little party right there? Then innocent folks won't be getting trampled underfoot. That's agreeable to me. Like a pack of weasels. We'll get them out and we have to burn them out. Them fellas will be hard to take. Some of your passengers might get hurt. Colonel, we're going to tear that place apart, stick for stick. Now, don't get wolfish around the head, Captain. You see them two pillars in the front of the place? I do, and I'm going to break them with my bare hands. You suppose, instead of doing that, you was to put that heavy chain. You got there around both of them. And then suppose you was to back your steamboat out of here for all she was worth. What do you suppose might happen? Well, ain't the furtiest thought accurate. Well, I just figured the Silver Bear needs to clean it out. What better way of cleaning it out than to drag it into the river? I should go with him and see everything turns out correctly. Go ahead. The inmates of this doomed establishment remain within. You've decided to give up gambling. I'd take it a pleasure to go anywhere with you. We'll be off for Nacodotius in the morning. I never hunted buffalo before. ought to be some sport. Speaking of sport, looks like the fight on down the street. Well, let's go. Never like to miss one. Hey, I know that, Hooper. I met him in New Orleans. That's the bee hunter. He simply called me a calf. If you insist upon it, you may... You hear, gentlemen? You hear the hymn? I'll give you within the nature of your life. Move it by flogging you out of your skin. Be so much the better for your pocket. Calf skins and good demand. Not here in the street, I beg you.  I can no longer avoid flogging him out. I suggest you put him under the pump where he can cool off. Yeah! Yeah! I'll be hunter. You ain't changed none. I see no reason for it, Thimble Rig. How you been? All like a wild horse. Wishing to meet a friend of mine. Well, Colonel Crockett, it's a pleasure to know you, sir. How'd you know it was the Colonel? I heard you was in town. Heard you were going to Nacodotius. I thought you might let me ride along with you. I know the way, middle and well. Why, we'd be glad to have you come along with us. The trails are my dangerous these days. How so? The band of murder and renegade has been raised in the hair from here to Texas. Well, since nobody else is tamed to crit us, maybe we'll get the chance. Now, Colonel, that's a possibility that sturs my liver. Well, now, that reminds me of a man. You are listening to the proudly-behaved production, Davy Crockett American. Our story will continue in just a moment after this important message. Young men of America, your country is building a mighty air force to maintain the security of our nation. This means that there is a job for you. The chance to do an important job with one of the finest organizations of its kind in the world today, the United States Air Force. If you're between the ages of 19 and 26 and a half, have had two or more years of college and are otherwise qualified, the Air Force needs you as part of the aviation cadet training program. For complete details, visit your nearest United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station today. You are listening to Proudly We Hail. And now we present the second act of Davy Crockett American. Be under. What's he looking at, Colonel? Buzzard. You can just make him out. Circular. Probably a dead buffalo. I think we better have a look. Come on. I've seen some bad sites. We'd only come a little sooner. We might have helped. Won't do any good to figure that way. Best thing to do now is we bury these poor folks, try and follow the trail of the murder and devils that did this. Yeah. We're only a day away from Nacodotius. We ride hard, we can get there sooner. We could rouse out some friends that got there and track these critters into the ground. Time for doing it ourselves. I know we're all of the rhinoceros breed, but the bee hunters ride them, will they? It'll be too many for us. Let's go see some of your friends in Nacodotius. Why don't you and Flimble Rig get better down here for the night? I'll go on and see the sheriff. Sounds reasonable. Had we all better see him? Oh, no, that won't be necessary. He's got a daughter named Kate and I'm kind of burning to see her. Colonel, I think we ought to go along to make sure he doesn't set fire to the house. We'll trust him. See you tomorrow, boy. Come on. Stranger, what you got in the way of the lodging for you? What you got in the way of the lodging for a couple of tired alligator? Good evening, sir. I don't exactly recollect your name. There's no consequence. We just like... I'm pretty sure I've seen you somewhere, both of you. Traveling to the western country, I presume.  Oh, no offence, no offence, sir. I wouldn't be thought on civil by any means. I always calculate to treat everyone with civility. Well, treat us all by answering our first question. Well, I can't give you lodging without knowing who you are. Oh, you can't, can't you? Well, I'll tell you who I am right enough. I'm shaggy as a bear. Wolfish about the head, active as a cougar, and can grin like a hyena till the bark will curl off a gum log. There's a sprinkling of all sorts in me, from the lion down to the skunk. And if you don't hurry up and give me in the colonel a place to bed down, I'll guarantee you'll pronounce me in the tires of a logical institute before I'm through with you.  Oh, dear, dear, yes. The colonel, you said. The colonel who? This is the place where I could live without a care. And is there nothing else you'd like to have to make you happy? Yes, there is, my gentle case. I'll tell you what it is. I'd like to have a little wife. I have a feeling I'm in a rub. No, not at all. I want you to meet McCate. I'm not your Kate. How do you do, colonel? Edward's been telling me about you. She's McCate, colonel, no matter what she says. Well, she is your lucky man. Pleasure to meet you, ma'am. I guess we got here just too late. The sheriff and about all the men in town are out hunting those devils.  Well, I'm glad they're being chased after. Sorry, we didn't get a chance to join in. Thimble Rig and I are off for Texas in the morning. You planning to join us? Well, I know the trail middling well. You ought to have somebody along who knows it. Middling well?  He and his Indian friends go bee hunting all over this territory.  You mustn't brag about me. Well, leave the tavern about the sun up. You'll be there? I'll be there, colonel, and we'll see you later. Thimble Rig just bought himself one of these new Vicksburg hats. Yeah? I have to see he don't get in any trouble with it. Does make him look a mite peculiar. I bet. Ma'am, it was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you, colonel. I hope you'll see that Edward stays out of trouble, too. My cape, my cape, my wonderful cape. Oh, cape was mine and I was here. Fiddly eye, oh, fiddly eye, dear. Be sure to stop him on your way back, colonel. Mr. Mudge, I'll do my best to avoid it. Fine, fine, I aim to appease. Hey, bee hunter, come on. Thimble Rig, don't rush a man in love. By this time, we're on our way, colonel. Few minutes one way or other won't matter to us. Here he comes. Wow, ain't she pretty? You forgive him? Forgive him. I think he's plum out of his head to go anywhere without him. Goodbye, friend. Goodbye. Saddle and bridle and booted rode he. A plume in his helmet, a sword at his knee.  And home came the steed, but home never came he. How much further to the Sabine River? Another hour, maybe a little less. Should pick up some buffalo signs soon. Of course, with that head he's wearing a buffalo, probably all run right into Pacific Ocean. What's the matter with this hat? I don't rightly know. It might not be the hat. It might be your head. Bee hunter, that ain't no way to talk. I'm a truthful man, you asked me. Ain't that so, colonel? That's so. What do you think of my hat, colonel? I don't know if I could give an opinion, Thimble Rig. Why not? Well, it puts me in mind of that terrible cold winter. We had a few winters back. What have I got to do with my hat? Well, speak directly, Thimble Rig, about that cold. Oh, colonel, you've hurt me bad. You've hurt me awful bad. Uh-oh, boys, I think we'd better ride. Heard my old shoes if you ain't right. That's him all right. Must be nearly 50 of them scum. I'd rather count them from a greater distance.  Stay feet over the next grid. We can hold them off, but just let me get where I can pin my hands and my sights. The thing they don't know how to shoot very straight. Well, we'll give them a lesson or two directly. Pick your man. Those three eager gorillas ought to be good for a starter. Three for three. You think we clipped their horns? We may have bent them a little. Probably made a matter and a hat full of rattlesnakes. I don't think it'll be long before they try their luck on us. Yeah, that was my feeling. How do you figure to get off here? We'll borrow a little trick from the engine. Get the horses into the river. Let them swim downstream. We'll hold on. In the dark, if it's quiet, they won't see us. Good enough. Let's go before they change our mind. Too late! Here they come! Drive them into the river! More coming for the other side! Come on, you starters! Let's get the coaches! Hey, that's the sheriff! I wondered for a while last night whether we were ever going to see it. All right, Semmel Rig, that's an insult to the Colonel and me. Didn't you know as long as we were there, you were safe as a babe in his mother's arms? Of course. The sheriff and his boys showing up, that didn't help, and he did it. Well, I think it added to the glory of the moment. Made it somewhat more noisy. Yeah, and left somebody to clean up the mess we'd made. The Colonel and I, if that is. They're a couple of real low-down wild men, ain't ya? Yeah! Recognize us for what we are, Semmel Rig. Of course, you know my own theories. You hadn't been wearing that pastiferous hat. Them poor souls might have let us go our way without any excitement. So I think the bee hunter here and I owe you an apology. It's a fine hat. Raven beauty of a hat. Yes, a roost of a hat. A monumental monument to the glory of all heads. Well, gentlemen, our misjudge is surely. And for that, I take off this flaming headpiece of joy to which you refer and bow. Well, since it's all Semmel Rig, why not leave it off until we find those buffaloes? Ha ha! David Crockett and his two friends, Semmel Rig and the bee hunter, much befell them on the trail before the gates of the Alamo closed behind them. On the day before that little fort fell, Colonel David Crockett wrote these final words in his journal. Go ahead! Words can mean everything or nothing, all depending on what you believe. To Colonel David Crockett, they meant everything, because he believed them and lived by them and finally died for them. David Crockett and men like him made up the past out of which we have grown. America is depending on her leaders in the air. If you're a young man between the ages of 19 and 26 and a half, have had two or more years of college and are otherwise qualified, you are eligible to join the ranks of America's leaders in the air. You can become an aviation cadet. The defense of our nation hangs heavily on our air strength, the finest in the world. But we cannot relax our efforts. The Air Force still needs pilots and aircraft observers. If you have the primary qualifications, visit your nearest United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station today. Ask about the Aviation Cadet Training Program. Do it now! This has been another program on Proudly We Have, presented transcribed in cooperation with this station by the United States Army and the United States Air Force Recruiting Service. This is Kenneth Fanghart speaking and inviting you to tune in this same station next week for another interesting story on Proudly We Have.


Here at the Amadeus Capital Partners' Office here in London. Hi, I'm Hermann Hauser. I'm the founder of Acron Computers, which spanned out ARM. So how do you feel about ARM? And so this is huge, no? There's like 75,000, 75,000,000. ARM is my proudest achievement in my life. And as people probably know, there is a cumulative sales number of ARM of over 70 billion ARMs in the world, which means that on average, there are 10 ARMs that have been sold for every person on Earth. So I interviewed Sophie Wilson, and she said that it was a plan, that it was MIPS for the masses. So she said she was not even surprised. But are you a little surprised what happened? The actual phenomenal amount of numbers of ARMs that have been sold worldwide in the end did come as a great surprise to me. I knew it was going to be very successful because of the outstanding properties that ARM has in terms of power consumption and the simplicity of the instruction set, which was very well received by the industry, but that it would become the dominant microprocessor in the world was not something that I expected. It's gonna be an interesting feeling to have, right?  Yes, well, it's very satisfying to give lectures anywhere in the world as you suggested. And I can count on over 90% of the people in the audience having one of my products in their pockets because we've got a 95% market share in mobile phones and most people now carry mobile phones with them. So back then in Cambridge, how was the atmosphere? How did it feel to go to the office every day and how do you define all these guys that you were working with? Well, you know, if we look back at history of how the ARM was created, it was one of the most exciting and satisfying events in my life when the ARM chip came back from the Foundry and I bought two bottles of champagne to celebrate. We plugged the ARM in the development system and of course it didn't work. So this was a great disappointment. But two hours later, they called me back into the R&D department and told me that it now works. Within two hours they managed to debug a completely new chip and it actually said, hello world, I am an ARM which meant that the ARM worked, the circuit board that they had constructed worked, that the software that they had written for a processor that didn't exist until then worked and put up the note, hello world, I am an ARM. So then we opened the bottles of champagne and we had a very good time. So when you're talking about the strategy back then of computer companies having to do their own silicon or they would fail, right? Yes, I gave many talks at the time when I argued that there will be two types of computer companies, those that have learned how to design on silicon and then those that will be dead and I wanted to be one of those companies that designed on silicon and that's what we did. Originally we didn't want to do a microprocessor. From the beginning of Acorn computers we always had custom chips for video, for the serial IO and it was only later when we realized that the 65 or two microprocessor which was an 8-bit microprocessor, very good microprocessor also used by Apple too and we used it for the BBC microcomputer but it just wasn't powerful enough for all the new software and all the new ideas that we had. So we went out and looked for a 32-bit processor. We actually liked the Intel 80 286 quite well but they wouldn't give us just the die and we accused them of doing a stupid pinout because they put both the address and the data bus on the same pins and we argued that you couldn't make a sensible computer out of that because we needed low latency because we always multiplexed the screen and the main memory on the same DRAM chips which was a very efficient way of building a very fast computer with very good graphics and they wouldn't allow us to have the die and do our own pinout. If they had allowed us, we would have never done the arm. So the only reason why we did the arm is that Intel wouldn't sell us the 80 286 die so that we could do our own pinout. Back then, were you meeting with people like Andy Grove or some other people at Intel? I did meet Andy Grove at one of Estetizel's conference. I remember having breakfast with him but that wasn't the discussion. At that time, we didn't work on the arm yet and because Acorn was such a small company that never really went up high enough in the Intel hierarchy. It was some lower level managers that made that decision. So that was a close thing, right? Intel didn't want to work with you, so you made arm. Yes, so we said, well, the story actually that I always tell is that Intel actually said when we asked them whether we could just buy the die, they said, look, get lost.  We were the first company to go from zero to a hundred million pound revenue in just five years. So we were a great success in Britain. So we dared to produce our own microprocessor. Little did I know that it was going to become so spectacularly successful. So Intel actually said get lost? I tell it, they didn't, I'm sure they didn't actually said get lost, they said, look, why do you think that Intel would sell you the die? You know, we are a chip company, we sell you the chip if you wanted, but you can't tinker with our chip. We're just to important the company for a little British company to change our chips. So that was the story about Intel. And then there was Apple starting around the same time as Acorn, right? That's right, just a year earlier than us, I think. And it's probably not widely known that the survival of Apple actually depended on ARM. And this is a story that John Scully tells, not me, if you Google John Scully's biography of Steve Jobs and ARM, you'll find a paragraph that says that Apple would have gone bust had Apple not been able to sell their one and a half million dollar investment in ARM, which bought them 43%. And they managed to sell it for 800 million at the time when they were in deep financial trouble. That was before the iMac and stuff, who's in the 90s? Yes, that was during the time that John Scully was running Apple. And Apple was in great difficulty at the time before Steve Jobs returned. And Steve Jobs used ARM a lot, and the iPod and... He used ARM everywhere. It was, of course, in the iPod, which became a great success. And then the iPhone and then the iWatch and all the A-series, the A4, the A5, and the A6, they're all, of course, ARM-based microprocessors. So did you meet Steve Jobs back then in the 80s? I did indeed, yes. In the early 80s, Esther Dyson's conference and the agenda conference was where everybody met at the time. So Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, they were all at these conferences. We often had dinner together. So it was an interesting time because all these people, of course, weren't famous yet. And so there was this guy called Larry Tesla, right? And he was instrumental together with you and together with VLSI, starting the spin-off. That's right. Larry Tesla was in charge of the Apple Newton and he made the decision to make the investment in ARM. And the thinking was because you were a small company, you would actually support it. What was that? Yes, it was an interesting decision because he was actually working with AT&T Microelectronics at the time. And AT&T Microelectronics was a $2 billion company and they had a processor called the Hobbit, which was actually quite a good processor, very comparable to the ARM. But he was very frustrated in his relationship with AT&T Microelectronics. And AT&T Microelectronics had done a microprocessor before that they then didn't support. So Larry was very worried that AT&T will do the same again with the Hobbit, that they'd have a good product, but they wouldn't know how to sell it and therefore they will discontinue it, which is actually what happened. But he trusted a small Cambridge company and it was extraordinary for a senior Apple manager to think that way. He thought, well, that little Cambridge company has nowhere else to go. They've got to make a success of the ARM. And that's what they did. And that's why he was willing to change from the Hobbit. He had already, he had a Hobbit design and changed to the ARM design partially for that reason, partially because of course the ARM was lower power, which was important. So how did you pitch to Larry Tetzler? How do you connect with him or get into these discussions to have him? Did he just show up because he knew about it or did you actually go? No, we were working on a, there was a Cambridge startup called Active Book Company. And he wanted to work with us on and find out what we were doing at the Active Book Company. And I told him it was ARM based and showed him what the Active Book Company could do. And then he was getting very interested in the ARM because he realized it was a really very powerful process that was exactly what he looked for for the Newton project. And he had the power to do that investment, 1.5 million? 1.5 million was nothing for Apple at the time, yes, he did. He was nothing? He didn't even have to ask the CEO? No, no, no, he did ask Scully, yes, whether he could do that, but... Do you know what kind of discussions they had or he just said, let me do it? It probably was a very simple discussion as I'd like to make this small investment in Cambridge and Scully said, ah, sure, go ahead. And then there's Bill Gates. Did he visit you once, right? Yes, he visited us at Acorn. This was before ARM. And I remember Sophie Wilson showing off his BBC Basic to him. It was clear that BBC Basic had many features and was running a lot faster than MS Basic, the Microsoft Basic, which Bill Gates himself, was the only program that Bill himself wrote.  Was impressed, but so you were better than Microsoft? You were better than... Oh, we were clearly better, we had a better basic interpreter but we also had a much better operating. He wanted to sell me MS-DOS and I could tell him, Bill, we can't take such a retrograde step. Look at our operating system, which actually is a real operating system. It was miles better than his operating system at the time. Of course, he improved his operating system later. And I could sit him down and say, by the way, you can write...  And then you can use the same load and save commands as with the floppy disk. And it all goes through the network to a server and Bill's reaction to that was, what's a network? We've never sold a computer at ACOM computers without a network connection because that's one of the great strengths in Cambridge. We have a close relationship with Andy Hopper, who is now the head of the computer lab who invented the Cambridge ring, which was one of the leading networking local area networks in the world at the time. Yeah. And then there was Apple at the time doing the Apple I, maybe Apple II and stuff like that. And would you say, do you want to answer? Or maybe you can... Yeah. That was my wife. Yes, Pamela, yes. Let me just get it. You don't have to cover it. You don't have to cover it if you don't want to. Okay, see you later. Bye-bye. So there was the Apple. I'm sorry, this is my question. Yep. How do you think the ACOM was comparing with what Apple had back then? Well, at the time, Apple II was one of the most popular computers in the United States. And we had the BBC Micro, which actually in the UK had a 60% market share. And one of the reasons for that was that the BBC Micro was just miles better than the Apple II in every respect. It ran twice as fast. It was black and white in color. It mixed graphics and text on the same screen, which the Apple couldn't do at the time. The Apple was also only black and white. And it had a network connection, which Apple didn't have at the time. So we had all the advantages at the time over Apple. But of course, Apple then brought out the Macintosh, which became a great success. So it was a good price also compared to what Apple had. Yes, and it also was a lot cheaper. A lot cheaper. Yes. So you were much better than Apple, much better than Microsoft. Yes. Much better than Intel. Yes. But why were you not able to... I don't know how to say, but kind of like kill them in the US? That's a very good question. And I've been asked that many times before. And there's a very simple answer to that. And that is just the size of the British market. We dominated the British market with a 60% market share, but that was nothing compared with the US market. And we had a very naive way of going into the US market. We started our own subsidiary. And we didn't hire the right people. We spent a lot of money trying to preserve one of the great advantages of the BBC Micro that it had lots and lots of connections. But because it had so many connections, it was very difficult to get past the FCC regulations. They had very stringent emission regulations.  So it took us a lot of time and a lot of money to re-engineer the company, to re-engineer the product. And by the time we put the product on the market, it was already too late and we actually lost a lot of money in the US. So is it just the FCC? Like putting a barrier kind of anti-competitive or not really, but I guess they would have let you in if you passed the test, I guess. But is it just the FCC or is it like a different style of business? Because maybe those companies in the US are more cunning or more aggressive or more, you know what I mean? Like, they become engaged? The delay was the FCC delay because of the particular engineering approach that we had taken with hindsight. What we should have done is just close down all the connectivity that we were so proud of because the computer itself was much better than the Apple anyway without the connectivity. And I remember that the Apple actually was very worried about our computer. I remember people on the board saying, well, they are the most serious competitor that we're going to have. But because of the delay, we never got traction in the American market. I think if we had brought out the product a year or two earlier, then we could have become a serious competitor to Apple. And Intel became a huge business also selling on chips. I guess it's just the business model, right? They have a business model of making all our money and... Yes, well, the main difference in the business model between Intel and ARM, of course, is that Intel is a semiconductor company that sells chips. ARM is a licensing company that just sells license to other manufacturers to produce the chips. And that turned out to be a major strategic advantage because the fight was actually not of Intel versus ARM, but was Intel versus the rest of the world because all the semiconductor companies in the world have ARM licenses. So Qualcomm, Apple, Toshiba, Sony, all these companies have ARM licenses and they produce their own microprocessors. And of course that's much cheaper for them because they don't need to buy the processors from a semiconductor company. And the royalty that ARM gets is quite small compared with the margins that of course Intel can command. And so the ARM was originally designed for a computer, for a PC. Yes. But then Nokia came in and kind of shipped the whole focus for ARM and mobile, right? And it's still kind of mostly focused in mobile. That's right. Yes, the ARM was designed for the BBC Microcomputer as a successor microprocessor to the 65 or two with which it has a lot in common. And power consumption was actually not one of the main design objectives other than we wanted to make sure that the chip would fit into a plastic package because the plastic package was a lot cheaper than ceramic packages and we didn't want to have a heat sink. So it wasn't really that the ARM was designed for portable computers that were battery powered, but we wanted to have a low power device in our BBC Micro that didn't need a heat sink. Little did we know that this became such a huge difference to other processors that it was the ideal processor for mobile phones. At that time, we were 20 times more power efficient than Intel and other processors. It really was a spectacular power difference that we managed to achieve at the same performance. So, and you also had the fastest performance, right? We had the fastest performance and that was the reason, just that one component, that ARM processor was the reason why ACON could survive against Intel and PCs for another 10 years. So the company continued selling its PCs, which were much higher performance than the Intel-based computers and had much better graphics than Intel-based computers for another 10 years. And your team designing this first ARM chip and the following, they were like geniuses, right? They were. I mean, Steve Febren, Sophie Wilson in particular, the two people who made the original design. Of course, there was also a big silicon design team, but the architecture was defined by these two people as opposed to 50 people, which typical microprocessor groups at Intel or AMD would help design an architecture. So, because it was such a small group, as far as I know, it's the only processor in the world that was designed by just two people. And that made for a very harmonious and very usable instruction set. And that instruction, it must be said that the instruction set was a stroke of genius by Sophie Wilson. The instruction sets of RISC-based computers are normally simulated for many, many months as IBM did. They simulated the RISC architecture for a whole year, simulating how Unix and the C compiler would run on their RISC machine. We didn't have a mainframe computer, so we asked Sophie what the instruction set should be and a week later, she had written down arguably one of the best instruction sets in the world and she did all the optimization just in her head. So, how was she back then and Steve Ferber, could you try to describe, would they like geeks? Or would they like... Well, there were both members of the Cambridge Microprocessor Group, which was a student group that was interested in microprocessors and microprocessors was such an exciting development in computing that all the students wanted to be working with microprocessors and there was a very vibrant microprocessor group that actually produced little kits that they actually produced little home computer kits themselves. And Steve had one based on the 2650, Signetics 2650, I remember, and Sophie was known as the CMOS guy. He was an expert at CMOS chips. So in those days, CMOS was not yet the dominant process. There were NMOS and PMOS products as well and bipolar projects. So that's how I got to know them when they were still at the microprocessor group.  PhD in physics? Yes, I did my PhD in physics and when I finished that, I met Chris Curry and we started Acorn Computers together and he, I remember, I said, Chris, it's a good idea to start a company but what are we gonna do? And he said, well, it's all happening in microprocessors. Let's do something with microprocessors. And that was our business plan. That was it. And then we went to the local bank and wanted a loan and the bank manager said, it's very good to see these young people start companies and then he did his due diligence and said, now, which college did you go to? And it was the bank that was opposite King's College. So I could point out of his window and say, this one. And he said, oh, very good, here is 10,000 pounds. Get started. And that was how the business was financed. There was no venture capital at the time.  You and Chris Curry, is it fair for you? We both invested a lot of money. It was first 50 pounds each and then we doubled this to 100. So the total amount of money that ever went into Acorn computers was 200 pounds. But would you say that making computers is related with your PhD or not really? No, other than, of course, all the semiconductor industry is physics-based and I did my PhD in physics, but I had to learn about computing and microprocessors. I remember one of the first things I did is I bought Adam Osborne's book on microprocessors because I didn't know what a microprocessor was. And it was actually a very good book, explaining in great detail of how a microprocessor worked, what the arithmetic logic unit was, how the registers were organized and what the store architecture was. So that's what I did. And then there's this movie called Markerman where you were... Were you really fighting with Clive Sinclair? Oh, yes, because Chris had been working with Clive Sinclair before. He left Sinclair at Radionics as it was called and then Science of Cambridge and because he didn't want to work for Clive anymore, and then we started Acorn computers. But that has always been because Sinclair produced a product called the ZX80 and then the ZX Spectrum. And we had the BBC Micro. There was a local fight between these two companies and who could sell more computers and who could bring out a better next-generation machine. Is there any chance that you could have merged you and Sinclair and kind of like Toucan Apple instead, like focus on... No, we had completely different philosophies. He was in the Z80 camp. We were in the 65 at Toucan. And it was actually quite healthy that there was this competition. We created a lot of energy within Acorn by knowing that there is a competitor in the same town that is also very good. So, could you describe a little bit more what is your role in ARM being spin out and how was the meetings and when you found the CEO and all the other stuff that happened to spin it out? Well, when I met Larry Tesla, who was looking for a processor for his Newton machine, that's how the ARM... Well, actually it started three years earlier. So we decided at Acorn that we really needed to spin out ARM because nobody would buy a microprocessor from a potential competitor because we used the ARM in our own computer, of course. So another computer company would always argue, well, they will always have an advantage because they're designing the ARM. So we decided to spin it out. We almost had a deal with Thompson in France for a European educational microprocessor. We almost had a deal with Siemens. Siemens was looking at the ARM, but in the end it didn't come through. But it was only when we met Apple that they were willing to invest in ARM and then we could spin it out. And then we found Robin Saxby to be the first CEO and that was another fantastic decision. I'd known Robin for many years before and because he was a sales manager for Motorola and he was trying to sell me the 60,000 as a follow-on to the 65 or two, but we decided to do the ARM. And then Robin went to the US to do US2 that was a direct right silicon company that was founded by Rob Wilmot and we managed to get him back to a head-up ARM and that was a fantastic decision because he bonded with the team extremely well and built a great company from a few million revenue to a value of $10 billion. And did Olivetti also have a role in pushing you towards spinning ARM out? Yes, I did. Many of these meetings I did together with El Serino Piolli, the vice chairman of Olivetti and we went together to Thomson and to Siemens and then we did the Apple deal. When it didn't pan out with Thomson and Siemens, were you a little bit disappointed? No, we were very disappointed because we knew that the ARM was an outstanding processor with fantastic characteristics. And I think the people in Thomson and Siemens understood that. They just couldn't understand how they would market the microprocessor. That was the sad thing. They couldn't see themselves make a business out of it. So how are those guys at Apple and VLSI, whether you're sitting around the table, everybody together, or was it mostly Acorn staff? No, it was actually the investment decision was done in a very memorable phone call where Larry Tesler said, okay, we're going to make this investment and VLSI technology was on there as well. And VLSI wanted some special deal. I forget what they wanted. And Larry Tesler said, nope, I'm not going to do this and put the phone down. And then VLSI came back and said, yes, we agreed to the spin out that was agreed between us and Apple because VLSI was only a small shareholder, only 5%. So VLSI was investing a little bit, but they were a foundry? Very little, but they were the first foundry, yes. And then the first British foundry was Plessy. And then there was those 12 people who decided who was going to be at arm. Like they were from Acorn, right? Yes, they were all Acorn employees. Well, Acorn was going through quite a difficult period at the time because sales weren't going so well. So some people decided like Sophie Wilson decided to stay at Acorn because she was really at the core of the Acorn computer architecture, not just the microprocessor, but a number of the other people who were in the arm design team because we had lots of silicon designers as well because of my philosophy of designing on silicon. That whole team was spun out and became arm. And Steve Ferber went to become professor of computer science at Manchester. Were you trying to get Sophie Wilson and Steve Ferber on the arm group or not? No, Sophie really was quite, it was really the heart of the Acorn architecture, which wasn't just the chip, but it was the whole computer architecture. So we were very keen to have Sophie remain at Acorn. And so Olivetti came like two, three years before to save Acorn, right? That's right. Acorn had gotten into financial difficulties at the time and Olivetti took a majority shareholding in Acorn. And I actually became vice president of research for Olivetti, which was a wonderful time that I had actually moved to Italy for three years to Ivrea, which is Olivetti town with my whole family. Did you already speak Italian before you moved there? No, but one of the conditions that I put on taking on the job was that we would be allowed to take a language course in Perugia, which we did. So it was a wonderful time learning Italian in this beautiful town. And we much enjoyed our time there. So your whole family speaks Italian? A little bit. The problem with Italians, at least in Ivrea and the people that we mixed with is that they all spoke very good English. So we didn't, I mean we can get by in Italian, but our Italian isn't as good as it should have been given we lived there for three years because especially on the R&D side, we mostly spoke English. So this spin-out, Arm LTD, this happened I think around 26 years ago, right? And so how long did it take before you started realizing, whoa, this is becoming huge? Well, it took a while because it wasn't until Nokia, of course, because to start off with, Arm only had two customers. That was the Apple Newton and the Acorn machine. And the Apple Newton was not a great success. And Acorn, although it was a reasonable company with revenues of about 70 million or so, the numbers were in the hundreds of thousands a year or maybe close to a million a year, not really enough to sustain a microprocessor company. So it took something like five years before suddenly Nokia came in? Yes, and it was, of course, we were surprised that Nokia would want such a powerful processor that was designed for a PC. And they said, no, no, we really want to have a very powerful processor because we want to improve the user interface and the features that we have in the mobile phone. And then they said, well, but we don't want to buy from a small Cambridge company. We buy from Texas Instruments. And then Robin decided, so if you licensed Texas Instruments, we might buy your chip. And then Robin decided that this was really the right business model for Arm to be a licensing company. So I guess he was flying around, trying to convince everybody to do Arm chips? That's right. And then the minute the first licensed deal was done with Texas Instruments, he then went out and did other licensed deals with Plessy in the UK. And now we have over 400 licensees, basically every single semiconductor company in the world now has an Arm license. So it's awesome, right? It's just, it's so huge. And so you meet once in a while with Sophie Wilson, Steve Furber, and those guys in the beginning? Yes, we do. And we just recently met again at the Cambridge Computer History Museum, where Mike Muller, who is the CTO of Arm, gave a little presentation. And it's a very nice group of people. And the amazing thing about the 12 people that spun out from ACORN is that some of them are still there and running the company, like the CTO of Arm, Mike Muller. Yeah, he was just doing a keynote last week and talking about the future. And so the future, can we talk a little bit about, because I saw you was, you were talking on BBC at one point when the, so can we be hopeful about the future of, let's say, UK technology, right? It's not just Arm. Like, what do you think about the future? Yes, well, I was very disappointed by the takeover of Arm by a soft bank, because I was very keen for Arm to remain a UK company. And there was no reason to change the ownership of Arm. Arm had a billion dollars of cash, was cash generative, has a management team to die for. They made all the right decisions over the last, you know, 26 years, there was no reason to change. However, you know, out of all the acquirers, soft bank really is probably the best choice because of Masayoshi-san, who is very passionate about the internet of things. I had a long conversation with him during that period of Arm being bought by soft bank. And he reassured me, and I think he means it, that he will leave the management in place, but he's also willing to invest in making Arm the success in the internet of things that it deserves to be. And so we've got a fantastic opportunity here with Arm because Arm is already used in probably over 90% of the internet of things worldwide. So there is the basic building layer, hardware layer is already Arm. And the opportunity, I think, is to create the internet of things architecture on top of it with a security layer of the data access layer, all those sort of layers, protocol layers that you need on top of it to make sure that the internet of all the different implementations of the internet of things can talk to each other freely, are secure, and can interface easily into the rest of the computing environment. Because the internet of things, I think you were mentioning that you've been doing some talks, we talk about five, and this is the sixth one now? This is the sixth wave, yes. I've got a talk called Five Waves of Computing, which a year ago changed the six waves of computing because they always asked me what the next wave was. And the five waves are the mainframe, the mini computer, the workstation, the PC, the smartphone, and the cloud. People often shouldn't forget, of course, that the usefulness of the smartphone comes because of its connectivity with the cloud. And then the sixth wave that is just about happening now is really the internet of things and machine learning. And the machine learning bit is very important and goes with the internet of things because it's the availability of the data that we're getting with the internet of things that will allow all kinds of really great improvements in our relationship with computers to happen. In particular, the changeover to voice. So we've just seen a very dramatic change in our relationship with computers because of touch. Who would have thought that a touch on phones and on iPads would make such a great improvement in the way we relate to computers? Well, this is nothing compared with the change that is just about to happen with the Google assistants, with Siri, with the Amazon Echo. Within the next five years, we'll see the most dramatic change in our relationship with computers enabled by voice. So we just go in any room and we start talking with the walls. Exactly. So one of the things that I got right in the five waves of computer talk when people asked me about the next wave, my slightly cheeky answer was no computers. And what I meant by that is you do not need a computer yourself because wherever you go, there will be a computing environment. And you can just talk wherever you are, you can talk to the computing environment and the computer will support you. And in a way, the biggest fight we're about to have is the fight for the personal assistant for that person in the computer that really understands you, that not just in terms of understanding your voice, but also understanding your intentions, your preferences, what you like to eat, to where you like to go, and so on, who you like to meet with and who you are trying to avoid. And this is very helpful, of course, in planning your life. And you were talking about each of these waves that had a leader that was not able to survive for the next wave. Yes, this is true. This is a surprising result of studying these waves of computers that at the beginning, there's always a lot of competition. And we always end up with either a monopoly or in the case of the PC wave, a duopoly between Intel and Microsoft. And then the people who dominate that wave always miss the next wave because neither Intel nor Microsoft has any appreciable market share in the smartphone. The change over from the smartphone to the internet of things might be different because the internet of things is so differentiated that there might not be a monopoly. On the other hand, there might be a monopoly at a much high level, maybe at the personal assistant level where there will be a hierarchy of suppliers of all the lower level stuff, like the interface to the lights and to the heating system and all the other internet of things. But the architecture might be set by people like ARM or Apple or Google or Amazon. But it's quite huge, the internet of things. If Masayoshi-san was talking about trillion devices in the next 20 years. Yes. So that's a trillion ARM processors. Yes, it is. So it might be quite useful right now to invest a lot of cash into speeding up research and development. Yes, and I think this is one positive aspect about the soft bank takeover of ARM that Masayoshi-san has said that he's willing to invest in building up ARM into the key company in the internet of things. And if that can be pulled off, as I think ARM absolutely can do that, then ARM could become the first $100 billion company, tech company in Europe probably. Because potentially a little bit the issue with Europe kind of is that the cash is not as accessible or I don't know, like people are not investing as aggressively as company like Apple goes and puts a billion dollars to Sharp or whoever makes displays and you know, just gets iPhones out before others dare invest the kind of money into new things. Yes, sadly we don't have technology companies in Europe of the same size and with the same financial firepower than the US and this is one of the disadvantages of the European location. But are you positive about the future in Europe, in the UK? Yes, I am. Well, in the UK it's just scored a fantastic own goal with Brexit, I've never seen a country trying to harm itself as much economically as Britain is and let's just hope that at least we don't get a hard Brexit here but a soft Brexit staying part of the European Union. But Europe itself is becoming a lot more innovative. If you look at the startup scene in Berlin and Munich and Cambridge and London, they are clearly not as good as Silicon Valley yet but the distance between Silicon Valley and these European clusters is shrinking all the time, especially as the change is to more software related products like FinTech and also big shift into life sciences where Europe has some great assets. Because these European startups could have a chance if they are able to find a trick and make money. It's important to not just have awesome technology, I guess in your career you have experience in trying to push the entrepreneurs to think about how to make money. Yes, and one of the biggest opportunities for Europe is actually in FinTech, in financial technology where we do have a very sophisticated financial system in the UK and a lot of that can be automated with machine learning, with very sophisticated data analytics. And I expect many breakthroughs and many interesting, we already have many interesting FinTech companies and indeed at Amadeus Capital Partners, we've invested in a few of them.  And investor, and this is what you do now? Yes, I founded Amadeus Capital Partners in 97 with Anne Glover and we will have our 20th anniversary next year. And right now I'm seeing more exciting deep technology deals than I've ever seen in my life. So this is a very happy time for us. So it's gonna be exciting. You're sitting down with people that have ideas and you're thinking for each one how to customize a package for them kind of, like what they need? Yes, one of the things that we need to do as venture capitalists, I always say, we provide two things in addition to money which should be helpful to small companies. One is we make our network of contacts work for the companies. And the second is we help them think through the business model. We've got to help with business models every time we make an investment. The company only has to get it right once. So we're not any smarter than other people which have a lot more experience in thinking through business models and they turn out to be very important for the success of the company as indeed Arm has shown. Because you have experience in many companies, some few succeed and some didn't really work out, right? Yeah, indeed though, there have been lots of failures and there's an old saying that you learn more from your failures than from your successes because it really hurts if something goes wrong and you remember that. All right, so looking forward to a future success here in UK. So Amai, thank you very much.