The history of Pace

Early domestic satellite television starts to develop. Rob sees a new opportunity.

Andy Coe, biker and brilliant satellite engineer, is recruited by PACE with the promise of a Harley Davidson motorbike.

The affordable SR 640 satellite receiver is launched in 1987 establishing the foundation for huge future success.

Satellite TV starts to take off

By the middle of 1986, the business dealing with modems, disc drives and other peripherals was doing reasonably well but the market for floppy disc drives was diminishing and the writing was on the wall for the future of external modems because modem chip manufacturers were making them smaller, and the tendency was to build them into the computers themselves.

Rob recalls that he felt something new needed to happen at this point. David had heard the UK government were going to launch a satellite and transmit TV programs from space to the UK for the first time. He suggested that PACE should investigate getting into this field.

David had bought a ‘Maspro’ satellite TV receiver that incorporated a mechanism that allowed the dish to be moved. For the viewer, this meant the receiver could be set to point the dish at one satellite, and then in order to watch a channel on another satellite, the user tuned to that satellite, the dish automatically turning towards the different satellite. Manufacturers had begun to make satellite ‘head end equipment’, as it was called.

PACE design an affordable receiver

The first products were expensive, professional, rack-mounted pieces of equipment meant for cable operators, who would have a data centre and a massive dish. They’d receive a television channel by satellite, and had an expensive, professional piece of equipment that received it, then it would be piped down ‘co-ax’ cable to subscribers.

That’s the equipment PACE got their hands on. But it was not designed for home use. These pieces of equipment were priced in the region of £2,000 or £3,000 apiece.

David didn’t know why they needed to be so expensive, so the PACE team looked at the technology and re-designed it in a domestic form that it was possible to produce and sell for a few hundred pounds.

David recalls that he was fascinated with the idea of ‘bringing pictures out of the sky’. There was an obvious business opportunity, but PACE didn’t have the in-house capability to develop a satellite TV receiver, so David set about trying to find a firm who had that capability.

In addition, Barry contacted the Department of Trade and industry (DTI) in Leeds and, after meeting the Regional Director Gordon Bennett, he obtained a substantial innovation grant for research and development (R&D) work.

Satellite engineer Andy Coe joins PACE

However, in the market doubts were growing as to whether the British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) television company, based in London, would actually launch their service. Whilst, at PACE, the modem business appeared to be improving, so PACE drifted away from the idea of satellite technology, until Gordon Bennett called to ask why the company hadn’t called down the DTI loan.

Barry explained the situation and Bennett then said he had received a letter from a satellite TV engineer in Wales who said he had designed a satellite TV receiver and was asking whether he knew anyone who might be interested. Bennett passed on the details of the engineer, Andy Coe to the company and, after an exchange of letters PACE arranged to call him at a telephone box at a pre-arranged time and, through this conversation, a visit to Bradford was set up.

When Andy arrived, he had long hair and a beard and was wearing Hell’s Angel leathers and biker boots. He was carrying an old shoe box which contained his satellite TV receiver. During the interview with him, a call was received from the police.

It appeared that Coe had developed the receiver on the premises of Welsh firm, specifically for them – and the firm wanted it back! PACE were asked to hold him on the premises. When confronted, Coe’s version was that the Welsh company had simply let him use their premises and facilities free of charge, with no obligation regarding what he developed.

However, what he had developed was of real interest to PACE. Fortunately, Coe had the (hand-drawn) circuit diagram, with the rest of the concept in his head. The equipment was de soldered and when the police arrived, they interviewed Coe and took away the cardboard box, while PACE agreed to get him a solicitor.

After the solicitor wrote to the firm, they dropped the case against Andy Coe two days later. These were clearly very interesting times in the developing market for digital products.

When the PACE Directors offered him a job, Coe didn’t seem terribly interested in a salary but what he did want was a company vehicle and the company vehicle had to be a Harley Davidson bike.

He remained with PACE throughout its development as a company, handling software and middleware as well as hardware. His recruitment was the final element that that enabled PACE to begin to manufacture their first satellite receiver, which was first released in early 1987.

The first satellite receiver is launched

In those days, because companies such as Sky Television hadn’t yet entered the market, it remained necessary to have a mechanism that moved the satellite dish to stationary satellites. The dish had to be steerable, and it had to be quite large – 2 or 3 metres in diameter – with arms that spanned it, left and right. When the viewer wanted a programme such as Cable News Network (CNN), the receiver had to know to move to this location at that angle and tune to that frequency and then tuning to another channel required another move.

The first satellite receiver was called the SR640 and had capacity to connect with 64 channels of information – but there weren’t 64 channels that a user could actually access.

PACE made their first satellite receiver, which was quite ‘rough-and-ready’ and then recruited a team of engineers, including Derek Oliver, who came from Thorn as a software engineer and became the software manager, with Graham Mitchell, who became the fourth company director for PACE. David already knew Graham and was aware that he would bring the professionalism into the engineering team that was needed at that point in time.

Whilst manufacturing modems and supplying software products were the principal business for the company and Satellite technology was in its infancy, PACE were well placed to grow this market.