Acorn Electron - History

History

The Electron was developed during 1983 as a cheap sibling for the BBC Micro with the intention of capturing the low-cost Christmas sales market for that year. Although Acorn were able to shrink substantially the same functionality as the BBC into just one chip, manufacturing problems meant that very few machines were available for the Christmas period — to the extent that some shops reported eight presales for every delivered machine.

This was a blow from which the machine never fully recovered, although games sales for it would ultimately outstrip those of the BBC Micro. Following Olivetti's 1985 cash injection into Acorn the machine was effectively sidelined.

With hindsight, the machine lacked the RAM (a typical program would need to fit in only around 20 kB once display memory is subtracted) and processing power to take on the prevailing Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. Despite this, several features that would later be associated with BBC Master and Archimedes were first features of Electron expansion units, including ROM cartridge slots and the Advanced Disc Filing System — a hierarchical improvement to the BBC's original Disc Filing System.

While it may not have been as popular as the Spectrum, Commodore 64 or Amstrad CPC, it did sell in sufficient numbers to ensure that new software was being produced right up until the early 1990s. This meant the Electron had a lifespan not much shorter than those more popular micros and much longer than competitors such as the Oric-1 and Dragon 32.