By Nick Heath, 7 October 2009 12:59
COMMENT
Andy Hopper is co-founder of the iconic Acorn Computers and currently head of the computer laboratory at the University of Cambridge. silicon.com's Nick Heath talks to Hopper about the BBC Micro, Acorn's early days and sustainable IT.
The BBC Micro, with its beige box and chunky keys, gave many people in the UK their first taste of personal computing.
Introduced in 1981, the machine was a runaway success for Cambridge-based Acorn Computers, which anticipated it would shift 12,000 but went on to sell 1.5 million, with a BBC being the machine of choice for UK schools.
Co-founder of Acorn Andy Hopper told silicon.com that he believes the BBC - with its easy to grasp Basic programming language - offered an experience that is missing today.
"I love the BBC Micro because of its open architecture, the way it was like a Meccano kit in the digital world, where you could make it into many things," he said.
"In a way it's too bad that the world has moved on. There is not an equivalent open platform today where you can construct something Meccano-style, for example to interest kids."
The BBC Micro went on to sell 1.5 million machines for Acorn (Image credit: Nick Heath/silicon.com)
Acorn was set up in 1978 and as one of its three founders, Hopper still keeps what he calls a "treasure trove" of components from the BBC Micro.
"I helped with some of the chip work, some of the CAD work that implemented the chips for the original machine and some of the networking so I have some of things relating to that. I have chips and disk drives, all those bits and pieces."
Though Acorn Computers produced its last desktop machine in 1998, today one of its former subsidiaries, ARM Holdings, designs the chips found in most mobile phones and some netbooks, bringing ARM revenues of £298.9m during the last financial year.
Hopper is proud of that legacy: "That all dates back to Acorn and the chipwork in the late 70s. We always had ambitions that were pretty grand, we had a view and a confidence and implementation strategy that was pointing in this direction."
When asked whether he had realised at the time that such a company might grow out of Acorn he said: "I had no ideaÂ…but it's wonderful."
Today, as well as serving as head of the computer laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Hopper is the chairman of remote computing software maker RealVNC, tracking system maker Ubisense and chip designer Adventiq.
Acorn suffered some setbacks in its early days, such as not producing enough Electron computers to satisfy demand after the machine's launch, and Hopper says that today's technology market is less forgiving of mistakes.
"It was unusual in those days to do it [set up a technology company], where as today it's completely usual. Today the climate of entrepreneurship is commonplace and routine but it's also much more competitive because it is a much more mainstream, midlife industry rather than an early stage industry," he said.
"Therefore while the fruits are bigger and there's more volume today, you have also got to be a little more savvy and a little less lucky."
Andy Hopper says that today's technology start-ups need to be savvy to survive (Image credit: University of Cambridge)
Acorn's success was partly down to the foresight and technical ability of its founders Chris Curry, Hermann Hauser and Hopper, who saw a chance to capture the personal computing market, which had been created with the launch of the Commodore Pet in 1977.
Hopper says that having exceptional people at the core of a company remains as important to its success today as it was back in the late 1970s.
"You can take a very good team, which doesn't have to be huge and if they are brilliant in the first place and properly motivated you can make amazing things happen, you can achieve goals disproportionately to their size," he said.
But he is concerned that research into technologies is being stifled in the UK, which he blames on universities being too focused on subjects that could generate commercial products and lucrative tie-ups with private companies.
"If you want an endorsement of a company for a research project and what you are trying to do might put the whole industry out of business then that is a tension," he said.
"Trying to apply too much constraint on the university system is problematic. It's out of that flexibility and those more quirky individuals that frequently the greatest and most interesting innovations come."
Hopper's own research interests lie in driving forward innovation in the area of sustainable IT.
He envisages a future where networks of sensors will give us our total individual energy consumption and where computing power could be delivered remotely from large datacentres powered by renewable energy.
Hopper sees a transformative role for IT, with devices that switch themselves off when they are not being used, and processing power used to better model global warming and to make areas such as transport and water management more efficient.
"I think sustainability of our societies is important, and I think that computing and comms are tools that will help with that. They are scalable to the whole world and to the developing world in particular," he said.
"You contribute to the wellbeing of people by using digital tools to make their standard of living higher."
It is a seed of an idea that, given time, Hopper hopes will branch into a sustainable way of life for future generations.
Comments
There are 13 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Ahh the days of the BBC micro - Model B, to Mater, to Master 512 to A3000 (Archimedes)....
Hopper comments "But he is concerned that research into technologies is being stifled in the UK, which he blames on universities being too focused on subjects that could generate commercial products and lucrative tie-ups with private companies.".
If a 'Return on Investment' model had been applied to NASA, the space age would never have happened. This provided the seed capital to start the IT boom and gave the USA the lead so companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Sun etc were the beneficiries. The revenue they have brought back to the USA has paid NASA's bill hundreds of times over.
The UK cancelled it's space programme, and just about everything else, leaving us with little to show other than ARM Holdings which managed to fight through.
2. George
"There is not an equivalent open platform today where you can construct something Meccano-style.."
What could you do with a BBC micro that you cannot do with a PC today?
3. Simon
@ George, Engineer
In truth, most things you could do with a BBC Micro you can do with a PC today - but the difference is that it's a lot harder to do now. What got people going was that you could sit down at a BBC, type in a few lines of BASIC, and 'make things happen'. Hooking up to the parallel port was almost trivial.
These days most PCs don't have parallel or serial ports - so you have to use USB devices. Software to install, development software to find and install, etc, etc. Without a lot of effort, it's a lot harder to get started and do 'simple things'. It's the simple things that get youngsters into this sort of stuff in the first place.
4. Catty McCat
Yeah. Not at all clear on what he was getting at there.
5. anonymous
The only reason for it's success - government promotion in schools, unlike the Apple, the BBC micro never made any impact outside the UK.
6. anonymous
The BBC Micro did have some adoption 'in the colonies' - notable Australia and New Zealand. The USA version had limited sales.
However the lagacy of the BBC Micro, as documented int he above article, is ARM Holdings. Shipment of ARM licences cores exceed Intel from memory of news articles.
iPod/iPod Touch
iPhone
Most mobile phones
Embedded Devices ...
7. Lionel A Smith
Adding a comment as test. Having tried many times and lost connection.
8. Lionel A Smith
George, and Andy,was getting at how hands on the BBC Micro and its siblings were. Sure you could hang things on Commodore, Sinclair (if they worked) and Atari boxes but these just did not have the expansion facilities of the BBC B. Parallel port aside which was often used for printing and the serial port there was also the User Port and the 'Tube'.
Whilst remembering the roles of Cris Curry and Andy Hopper perhaps the real whiz of the bunch Roger Wilson should be remembered. Last evening BBC 4 'The Micro Men' was real trip down memory lane, with a few artistic tweaks here and there maybe such as Roger eating his Chinese with a pair of multimeter probes!
9. Lionel A Smith
Being a mature student in the 1980s I could not afford a BBC B and so an Electron had to suffice. I had tremendous fun with this and learned much about writing software that would adjust itself to running on each of its siblings where there were differences in memory addressing for many low level functions. But the presence of the built in assembler was a boon. I even once assembled Apple ][ code in Mode 7 on my, by then, much expanded Elk (as we used to call it), didn't run it just transfered it because the Apple did not have a decent assembler of its own. Producing such code for both Acorn and Apple 6502 (etc.) based computers made one very aware of the superior memory architecture of the Acorn. I also had robot creations running from a User Port plugged into an Electron expansion.
If Andy Hopper is interested I have a few interesting old Acorn bits here including 6502 Second Processors (The Tube) and Teletext adapters amongst a host of those little spiral bound m User Guides for various bits of hardware, firmware and software. I intend to give them away.
10. Andy Fox
Agreed that the main reason for its success was rich mummys and daddies buying the Beeb for little johnny so he would have the same computer as school used. The reason most of us commoners didnt have one? the price, Simples. it was 400 quid before you started adding the little bits and bobz on. You could own better machines for less outlay, and where were all those programs we were promised? I dont recall it being any more reliable than any of the other machines at the time. When the electron arrived on the scene i do remember that there were some compatibility issues, some Beeb progs wouldnt run on the Electron and vice versa. In my opinion the Dragon had better BASIC, the C64 better sound and graphics, the spectrum had more software available and all of hte above were cheaper. the Electron was an also ran in the 80s Micro Race.
This little debate takes me back to the heady days of Personal Computer Weekly with listings to type in every week and the constant arguements of which was the best 'puter. Hmm I have a sudden urge to play The Elite.. Commander Jameson here i come
11. Andy Fox
Agreed that the main reason for its success was rich mummys and daddies buying the Beeb for little johnny so he would have the same computer as school used. The reason most of us commoners didnt have one? the price, Simples. it was 400 quid before you started adding the little bits and bobz on. You could own better machines for less outlay, and where were all those programs we were promised? I dont recall it being any more reliable than any of the other machines at the time. When the electron arrived on the scene i do remember that there were some compatibility issues, some Beeb progs wouldnt run on the Electron and vice versa. In my opinion the Dragon had better BASIC, the C64 better sound and graphics, the spectrum had more software available and all of hte above were cheaper. the Electron was an also ran in the 80s Micro Race.
This little debate takes me back to the heady days of Personal Computer Weekly with listings to type in every week and the constant arguements of which was the best 'puter. Hmm I have a sudden urge to play The Elite.. Commander Jameson here i come
12. Lionel A Smith
ndy Fox
'When the electron arrived on the scene i do remember that there were some compatibility issues, some Beeb progs wouldnt run on the Electron'
This would be expected with software using Mode7 and the more numerous sound channels of the BBC B. Also any software which called hardware locations directly rather than using the address vectors provided could fail. This became particularly true with disc drive systems that had very different bus bit number orders between the various models. A quick glance at The New Advanced User Guide which covered BBC B, Electron B+64 and B+128 and Master 128 will demonstrate.
In the early days, before other models came along, many programs used non-recommended methods and later issue cropped up as games developers tried various, cunning, methods of shoe-horning quarts into the pint-pot of the memory space.
As for cost. Apple ][s of the period were considerably more expensive, particularly with added disc drives. I recall a cost comparison in A&B Computing once – I may still have that here.
13. anonymous
I would love to know if you can get a copy of Painter to be used on a new computer. I still have my BBC bought just after the launch from Watford Electronics and it is still used but the loading from the tape is a nuisance. A friend did put in onto a 5 1/4 floppy disc but that computer doesn't work very well. I loved the game and used to read with interest the scores mainly by children that I could only dream about. I still have all the old magazines.