Acorn Computers Ltd

 

Acorn Computers Ltd, founded in Cambridge in 1978 by Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, was a British computer company known for the BBC Micro and the Acorn Electron, and later the Archimedes.

Founding and Early Years

Acorn Computers was founded in 1978 by Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry in Cambridge, England.

They got their big break when in the early 1980's they secured the contract to build the BBC Micro (based upon the Acorn Proton) fighting off other well known companies at the time including Sinclar, Dragon and Oric.

Notable Products

• BBC Micro: Acorn is perhaps best known for the BBC Micro, a computer widely used in schools for computer literacy programs in the 1980s.

• Acorn Electron: Another popular computer, the Acorn Electron, was also produced by Acorn.

• Acorn Archimedes: Acorn also developed the Acorn Archimedes, a computer with a RISC-based architecture.

Key Developments

• RISC Architecture: Acorn played a key role in the development of the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture, which later became the basis for the ARM processor.

• ARM Holdings: The ARM processor architecture was spun off into a separate company, ARM Holdings, in 1990.

Decline and Dissolution

Breakup and Privatization: Acorn was broken up into independent operations in 1998 and taken private by MSDW in 2000, effectively ending the company.