Acorn Computers

This article is about the (now defunct) manufacturer of 8-bit microcomputers and 32-bit RISC OS personal computers. For the defunct company that purchased the brand name in the early 2000s, see Acorn Computers (2006).

Acorn Computers Ltd.
Company typePrivate
IndustryComputer hardware
FoundedDecember 1978; 45 years ago (1978-12)
Founder
Defunct15 January 1999; 25 years ago (1999-01-15)
9 December 2015; 8 years ago (2015-12-09) (Cabot 2)
FateBought by MSDW Investment Holdings Limited
SuccessorElement 14 Ltd.
HeadquartersCambridge, England, United Kingdom
Key people
Products

Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England in 1978 by Hermann Hauser, Chris Curry and Andy Hopper.[1] The company produced a number of computers during the 1980s with associated software that were highly popular in the domestic market, and they have been historically influential in the development of computer technology like processors.

The company's Acorn Electron, released in 1983, and the later Acorn Archimedes, were highly popular in Britain, while Acorn's BBC Micro computer dominated the educational computer market during the 1980s.[2] Acorn also developed the reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architecture set in 1985 and an operating system, RISC OS, for the hardware. The company also designed the ARM architecture; this part of the business was spun-off as Advanced RISC Machines under a joint venture with Apple and VLSI in 1990, now known as Arm Holdings, which is dominant in the mobile phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) microprocessor market today.[3]

Acorn in the 1990s released the Risc PC line and the Acorn Network Computer, and also had a stint in the set-top box and educational markets. However, financial troubles led to the company closing down its workstation division in September 1998, effectively halting its home computer business and cancelling development of RISC OS and the Phoebe computer.[4] The company was acquired and largely dismantled in early 1999.[5][6] In retrospect, Acorn is sometimes referred to as the "British Apple"[7][8] and has been compared to Fairchild Semiconductor for being a catalyst for start-ups.[9][10]

  1. ^ "Acorn co-founder on the BBC Micro and the early days of personal computing". ZDNET. Retrieved 26 September 2024.
  2. ^ "History of ARM: from Acorn to Apple". 6 January 2011. Archived from the original on 16 March 2018 – via The Telegraph.
  3. ^ "ARM CPU Core Dominates Mobile Market". Tech-On!. Nikkei Electronics Asia. Archived from the original on 11 September 2011.
  4. ^ "Chris's Acorns: RISC OS After Acorn". chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk. Retrieved 26 September 2024.
  5. ^ Meyer, David (19 November 2010). "Dead IT giants: A top 10 of the fallen". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 3 January 2015. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  6. ^ Staff (20 January 1999). "Acorn renames to fit with design business". Electronics Weekly. Retrieved 26 September 2024.
  7. ^ "Acorn founder advocates moving datacentres to NZ". Stuff.co.nz. 31 January 2009. Retrieved 4 March 2012. Acorn Computers, once regarded as the UK's equivalent of Apple Computer ...
  8. ^ Report on Network Computer Technology Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Simon Booth, European Commission, 1999.
  9. ^ Shillingford, Joia (8 March 2001). "From the BBC Micro, little Acorns grew". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 May 2014. Retrieved 2 June 2011. Originally, Acorn planned to use Intel's 286 chip in its Archi-medes computer. But because Intel would not let it license the 286 core and adapt it, Acorn decided to design its own.
  10. ^ Athreye, Suma S. (18 July 2000). "Agglomeration and Growth: A Study of the Cambridge Hi-Tech Cluster" (PDF). SIEPR Discussion Paper No. 00-42. Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 October 2013. Retrieved 18 June 2012.