Dad had form with tech – long a fan of the telex and latterly the fax, he carried a shoulder-worn analogue mobile (which he called “Yuppy”), sported a Sharp IQ organizer (pocketable qwerty, touch screen for removable app cards and a hefty 128kb memory) and had assembled a hotch-potch of venerable old technology stars. This ‘Teletran’ is now on display in the Swindon Computer Museum (they gamely accepted it despite a general air of unspoken confusion between us about how it had actually functioned).
It wasn’t just Yuppy who was given a name. His battery-powered golf cart (c1984) was Herbie; the heating boiler was Helga (assisted by the more modest stoves Pinky and Perky); and a Landrover with glass windows in the back was The Popemobile.
