With the proposal to call the merged Systems Designers-Scicon company SD-Scicon, a grand old British computer industry name will finally make it to the lists of the Stock Exchange – a name, indeed, that illustrates the limited but nevertheless real power of the press – back in the days when Computer Weekly was a monumental pillar of the UK computing establishment, and Tony Higgins its equally monumental news editor, BP announced that it would call its new computer services offshoot Scientific Control Systems: Much too clumsy, declared Tony with a finality that brooked no ar-gument – we shall call you Scicon – and so it has been ever since.
