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Dr David Potter CBE, who died on 28 June aged 82, was a scientist, technologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He founded the pioneering technology company Psion in 1980, riding on the wave of the home computer boom and launched the world’s first mass-market handheld computer, the Psion Organiser. The company later went on to become one of the prime movers in the mobile phone revolution, designing the operating system Symbian.
David Potter was born and spent his early years in East London, South Africa before moving to England to attend Trinity College, Cambridge to read natural sciences. He later received his doctorate in mathematical physics at Imperial College, pursuing an academic career in the 1970s with spells at UCLA in California.
Potter met fellow South African Elaine Goldberg while she was working towards a doctorate at Nuffield College Oxford on the political role of the press in South Africa, published as her first book.
The couple met at a party in Tunbridge Wells and arranged to meet up the following weekend in Oxford. “He pretty much proposed to me within a week,” Elaine told me later.
Elaine later went on to work as a journalist at the Sunday Times under legendary editor Harry Evans. While there she co-authored several Sunday Times books, including Suffer the Children: the Story of Thalidomide and Destination Disaster: From the Tri-Motor to the DC10. She later served as a trustee of Index on Censorship for many years.
In 1980 David Potter founded Psion, using money he had made from a scheme investing in the manufacture of duvets, tapping into the British appetite for a more continental lifestyle during the package holiday boom. David located a duvet factory in the north of England and interviewed workers in the local pubs to find out everything about the company before investing in the firm.
Psion was one of the early leaders in developing software for the fast-growing home computer industry, particularly Sir Clive Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum, writing the popular software package Flight Simulation and marketing and distributing the Hungry Horace series of arcade game clones.
From 1984 Psion pioneered the management of personal information by inventing the Organiser, the world’s first mass-produced handheld computers for personal use. His handheld computers, particularly the Psion Series 3, were synonymous with the early 1990s and went on to sell in their millions.
In 1998, David led the creation of the Symbian operating system partnership with mobile phone manufacturers Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Matsushita.
One of Elaine’s sisters, the New York art historian and critic RoseLee Goldberg, said on many occasions that “David always described the future”. Elaine said, “He wasn’t a crystal ball gazer, he just had a very good sense of what might be coming down the road.”
He was someone who could make things happen too.
His half-brother from his mother’s second marriage, Colly Myers, once said, “The most useful thing about David is he always believed something was possible. If David said it could be done, it would be.”
David was awarded the CBE, in 1997, for services to the manufacturing industry and in 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineers. Between 2003 and 2009, David served as a non-Executive Director to the Bank of England.
In my many discussions with him over a period of years, he regularly lambasted the ability of successive British governments to support innovation.
But entrepreneurship was not his only passion.
In 1999, when Psion’s stock was riding high before the dotcom bubble burst, he sold a chunk and established with Elaine an eponymous foundation to encourage a stronger and fairer society. In the 27 years since, the foundation has granted more than £23 million to registered charities in the UK and abroad. The focus of the foundation is on education and civil society and it provided grants contributing to “economic development and well-being in a plural, rational and tolerant society”.
Index on Censorship was one of the many charities the foundation has supported over the years, alongside Amnesty International, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Liberty and Human Rights Watch.
He was passionate about education, serving on the 1997 National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (the Dearing Committee) and was a board member of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. He served as a visiting, honorary fellow and governor for a wide range of higher educational establishments. From 1999 to 2003 also served as a member of the Council for Science and Technology reporting to Tony Blair’s Cabinet.
David maintained strong connections with his native South Africa, spending long periods in the country every year and also hosting Nelson Mandela at his home in London after the South African president’s release from prison.
The Potter family home in South Africa was Nieuwe Sion, a working fruit farm in Simondium near Paarl that huddled below the Western Cape’s mountains. The name’s similarity to his company name Psion was immensely amusing to David.
In 2015, David and Elaine took the philanthropic decision to hand over ownership of the farm to its 30-strong workforce to develop as a luxury retreat and working fruit farm.
Speaking to the press at the time, Fielies du Toit, the farm’s manager, said, “The Potter’s vision of empowering their workers moves beyond the payment of living wages and the creation of a safe and worker friendly production environment. Their ultimate goal is to help workers and their families, especially their children, become less dependent on the farm for their financial wellbeing, by giving them access to the mainstream economy.”
David’s other passion was his family. David and Elaine had three sons.
In the days before founding Psion, he did much of the childcare due to the flexibility of his academic life compared to the intense shift-based work Elaine was doing at the Sunday Times.
“Family was always very important to him,” Elaine told me a few years ago. “If you look at his Who’s Who entry, his interests include his family, and that’s a true reflection of him.”
David Potter had a brilliant mind and was equally at ease talking to business leaders as young children, scientists and world leaders. His success in business was matched by the philanthropy he demonstrated in later years. Index on Censorship is grateful for his and Elaine’s support. He will be much missed.
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