Of Microsoft & Minibuses

Chances are that you are reading this blog using your PC and MS Windows XP. Yes, some of you will have an Apple and its propriety OS, some Windows 98 or 2000 and, even more improbably, some will be using Linux. But XP it’s likely to be.

What a contrast to 20 years ago. Then, the Internet wasn’t even heard of, beyond academics and the military. Even so, Microsoft had just launched its first edition of the Windows environment, but even assuming that you owned a PC (an 1088 or 1086 in those days), you’d probably still be running the MS-DOS operating system for a good five years more with, at the time, quaint programs such as PIP, to copy material from hard driver to 8" floppy. And no one mention the Edlin function.

Ah, nostalgia! We take the development of the PC and its software so much for granted.

And the point of this? Change. It’s not just in computing that there's been significant change. 20 years ago, at the launch of Windows, Britain was experiencing a race to run minibuses. Not the Mercedes 25-33 seaters from the late 1990s, now coming to then end of their life but the first generation Transit and Sherpa conversions offering 16 passenger seats and a pretty bouncy ride in generally cramped conditions. And that was just for the driver.

In the same way that no one would’ve thought in 1984 that the DOS black screen and white, amber or green C:\>_ prompt could ever be replaced with anything so user friendly as a Windows environment, who in 1984 would’ve predicted National Bus Company’s 1985 order for minibuses – and the consequent halving of its usual order for big conventionals?

In fact, by 31 December 1985, NBC had either placed in service or ordered 1,500 minis. They were to have a remarkable affect on the industry, its drivers, its fitters and passenger growth but, of course, did not last terribly long owing to the rather obvious fact that at peak times (and sometimes off-peak times, too) they could not carry large loads.