Jupiter Cantab Limited was a Cambridge based home computer company. Its main product was the 1983 Forth based Jupiter Ace.
The company was founded in 1982 by two ex-Sinclair Research staffers, Richard Altwasser and Steven Vickers. Their machine was, externally, remarkably similar to the ZX Spectrum, with a copycat rubber keyboard. It also used the same Z80 processor. However, the Ace's video output was limited to monochrome, unlike the Spectrum's 8 colour capability.
The £90 Ace was a flop in both the UK and US markets: the Forth language, although considered powerful, was not as popular or accessible as the already well-established BASIC language featured in competing microcomputers. In the US it was sold as the Ace 4000.
The company went bankrupt in November 1983 and its assets were sold to Boldfield Computing Ltd in 1984. The remaining hardware was sold-off into 1985.
Famous quotes containing the word jupiter:
“Few and signally blessed are those whom Jupiter has destined to be cabbage-planters. For they’ve always one foot on the ground and the other not far from it. Anyone is welcome to argue about felicity and supreme happiness. But the man who plants cabbages I now positively declare to be the happiest of mortals.”
—François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553)