In The Beginning...
NASCOM Microcomputers was originally set up as a small subsidiary of the Nasco Ltd component distribution company. Nasco stood for "North American Semiconductor Company" (or it may have been "North Atlantic Semiconductors" depending on where you look and what you choose to believe! In either case, the "M" almost certainly stood for "Microcomputers".) Their business was importing - guess what?
There is a story - which I have now heard from two sources so it may be right (!) that the Nascom-1 was designed (well, the idea was sketched out) on an airline serviette during a transatlantic flight. It appears that John Marshall got into a conversation on the flight and the idea just happened - these things do sometimes.
John set up Nascom a short time later in November 1977 (later becoming Managing Director).
[Just a little note here... I was once told that one of the original reasons for the creation of the Nascom-1 was to enable Nasco to increase their flow of the "new technology" Z80 processor. The machine was designed to use all the chips that Nasco were "pushing" at the time - Z80-PIO, 2102 memory and various 74 series chips. This may also account for the use of the 81LS97, which was quite an unusual IC at the time. Of course, this may be a load of rubbish but it gives food for thought.]
Considering that the new company had little cash, it did very well.
Tony Rundle came up with the following interesting snippet (I'm sure he won't mind me quoting him on this):
"At a meeting before the official "launch" I asked John Marshall how many kits we would have to sell in order to be profitable. He said about 200 would be OK but that 400 would be really good. We sold that number in a few days after the launch. It was only after it became clear that we had a phenomenon on our hands that a separate company was set up and full time staff employed. Before that most of us had been moonlighting, and the Nascom was just an electronics kit sold by Nasco, Johns component company that became the parent of Nascom ltd.
"The keyboard was about the most expensive single component and was crucial to the costing and the overall kit "offering". After the launch we found out that the keyboard supplier only had about 400 - the were designed for an old vdu! John managed to find another source from somewhere (most suppliers wanted more than the price of a complete kit just for the keyboard). If he hadn't managed to pull that off, Nascom would have been dead.
Kerr Borland joined on the marketing side in January 1978 and became Nascom Sales Director. He left again in late 1979/early 1980 to form a new company (called Product Launch). His interest in the fledgling Nascom appeared to have waned once the company had got started. However, his new company was doing some of Nascom's promotional work! Later still, if my information is correct, he appears to have had a hand in starting the rather short-lived Arfon Microelectronics (K.S.S. Borland is listed as "Managing" at the foot of one of Arfon's letterheads). Arfon's first products were a speech board (for various machines) and a light pen which was compatible with Nascom's (Lucas's) IVC card. They also produced a range of peripherals for the Commodore VIC 20 before they finally went into receivership.
The NASCOM computers were produced in the UK only. The user base, however, spread into Europe and Scandinavia.