Reading up what Pat Hammond has to say about Hornby Zero One I did not realise that Hornby are considered to be the grandaddy of all DCC companies! Zero One was a £300,000 development by Hornby in 1977-79. Thats probably £1m to £1.5m or more in todays money.
It was not a technical failure and worked very well. It simply did not sell in the quantities required to justify continuing with the product at that time. You have to remember that at that time there was only Hornby Zero One and Hornby set up a major American distribution network to sell the idea of Zero One Command Control to the Americans. The Sinclair ZX81 still had not been invented remember and the white Sinclair polish notation pocket calculator was £20 to buy! We were all still using slide rules and log tables and the computer at the university took up a whole building! So Zero One was way ahead of its time.
Users at that time were put off DCC by 4 things:-
1) the need to keep track spotlessly clean to avoid signal degradation and the inconveniance of doing this daily.
2) the need to install chips into locomotives and all that this entailed.
3) the expense. Chips in 1980 were £15 each at a time when a large loco was £15!
4) the difficulties installing chips into non Hornby product which at that time had all sorts of weird and wonderful chassis wiring and pick up arrangements!
So with the lessons of history behind us how will the next generation of Hornby digital users fare?
Happy modelling
Gary
It was not a technical failure and worked very well. It simply did not sell in the quantities required to justify continuing with the product at that time. You have to remember that at that time there was only Hornby Zero One and Hornby set up a major American distribution network to sell the idea of Zero One Command Control to the Americans. The Sinclair ZX81 still had not been invented remember and the white Sinclair polish notation pocket calculator was £20 to buy! We were all still using slide rules and log tables and the computer at the university took up a whole building! So Zero One was way ahead of its time.
Users at that time were put off DCC by 4 things:-
1) the need to keep track spotlessly clean to avoid signal degradation and the inconveniance of doing this daily.
2) the need to install chips into locomotives and all that this entailed.
3) the expense. Chips in 1980 were £15 each at a time when a large loco was £15!
4) the difficulties installing chips into non Hornby product which at that time had all sorts of weird and wonderful chassis wiring and pick up arrangements!
So with the lessons of history behind us how will the next generation of Hornby digital users fare?
Happy modelling
Gary