Did you know that while other computer companies were struggling for traction in the early days, the BBC sponsored Acorn Computer Company was leading the world?
Did you also know that an offshoot of the original Acorn Computer Company, ARM, is into processors (CPUs) and is bigger than Intel? ARM = Acorn RiSC Machines.
People always associate computers with the USA, but the first useful computer was made and used in Britain? It was used at Bletchley Park to help break the Axis Powers codes.
The Acorn team in Cambridge UK were a bright bunch. Look what they produced over time.. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/sec/79/Acorn-Computers/
The most famous is the BBC Micro which was the mainstay of computer learning in
British schools. Click on the BBC B Micro in the link I gave you above to see the huge array of software and connectibles for the machine. There was absolutely nothing like them anywhere else.
The language was BBC BASIC, a step up from regular BASIC which embodied commands not seen in the original. It made the language very powerful indeed while still remaining simple to use. Even I managed to produce a few games and bits, even an assembly language clock which stayed on top of whatever was on-screen. Well, not quite always. The trouble is that I was no programmer and didn’t have the mindset to sit for hours bug checking, but what this period did teach me is how everything comes together.
I have more sympathy for the programmers when their stuff fails to interact with whatever else is on a computer. I know how difficult it is to test a program or utility and ever guarantee that it will not affect anything else that is running..
So what beat Acorn and why are they still not making computers? This is a company that built stuff to a high standard. There was nothing flimsy in their lineup. The 90’s saw the rise of the cheap and very often flimsy IBM clones, a market in which the Acorn way of doing things could not compete.
The Archimedes RiSC computer and the associated operating system was way ahead, closer to midrange business machines than for home or school use. Sadly, production of computers was halted.
This is not the end of the story.
The ARM processor which spawned the Archimedes range is a very powerful, very fast, and very power efficient processor, so much so that it is ideal for use in cellphones, PDA’s, tablets, essentially anything where mobility and performance are necessities. The computers may have disappeared, but the technology is alive and well, and huge business for what is left of the original Acorn company.
Also, the Domesday Project of 1986 has been saved from destruction. The laser disks upon which all of the data was stored eventually suffer what is called ‘laser rot’. Very few could ever afford the system on which the Domesday Project ran, but it is now being transferred from the laser disks and updated.
