Acorn Computers - Business Promo Video - Circa 1984

This promotional video from Acorn Computers explains how Acorn was expanding to accommodate increasing sales. Founding Partners, Christopher Curry and Hermann Hauser explain the mission that Acorn had and what took them to their lofty position in the mid-eighties.
This video features: Cub Monitors, BBC Micro, Acorn System Computers, Acorn Offices in Cambridge, Acorn Electron, BBC Computer Literacy Project, Computers in Schools.

[@glennproctor4178]

7:30 - Hermann talking about their "custom chip design facility" which became ARM, the key to it all

[@flagg85]

Econet was an ahead of its time for low cost LAN, I had a lot of fun making text appear on other people's screens using the *Notify command when I was at school.

[@andrewthomas-woolf6150]

Yup. And given the memory mapping of e.g. the keyboard device, I had plenty of fun with the Econet "Immediate" (non-cooperative) OS calls. I even found the old "Advanced User Guide" recently, and these PEEK/POKE calls are documented on page 52 & 54 of archive.retro-kit.co.uk/bbcdocs.com/filebase/econet/Econet%20Advanced%20User%20Guide.pdf

[@mikeh_nz]

Oh yeah - awesome fun, but little thought for security. At school I would use it to - see the screen of the beeb in the teachers staff room & monitor key strokes - poke programs into remote computers (that would basically count down and the reboot the computer - I can’t remember how I got it to execute - probably I poked into the interrupt vector and hooked it in that way)

[@matthewtymaja3760]

@@mikeh_nzThe Econet security improved on RISC OS, to some degree. However, it was still possible to manually load a small program running invisibly on the desktop, and use that for all kinds of fun! While being careful not to make anyone lose their work, I still remember the custom commands I made. ‘NOISECRASH’ was particularly good; a full volume VDU7, followed by immediately overwriting the vector tables with garbage 😀

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

What a lovely video. I for one wish Acorn all the best for the future!

[@eliotmansfield]

always remembered finishing break early to be at the front of the queue to get in the computer lab to make sure you bagged one of the few beebs with a colour cub screen

[@SuperBoobaloo]

Love those stencils.

[@markinskip9523]

A few glimpses of the construction of the new building that eventually became 'Arm 2' and which was finally demolished earlier this year to make way for a car park.

[@rileyindieman1]

Born in late '81 and I can just about recall using a BBC micro in school. There was a game and I can't remember the name - I think it involved hexagons or cells that you needed to capture or invade. Hopefully that rings a bell for someone. The computer that really sticks in my mind was the Archimedes. A favourite memory of mine was of our primary school head teacher showing us the game Lemmings .

[@Super6502]

I had a Acorn Atom when it was released and I loved it to pieces. Still have it today =)

[@BeautifulNorfolk]

They certainly had the right idea. Econet was ahead of its time.

[@ColinHoad]

This is simply wonderful viewing, thanks for sharing it! I'm swept away by that heady 80s optimism, what a company to be part of back then. Amazing stuff.

[@OzRetrocomp]

2:53 Chris Curry: "We weren't interested in setting a price, then fitting in whatever components we could afford". *Clive has left the chat*

[@MrZeroPage]

Brilliant! :)

[@Oldgamingfart]

Sir Clive: * back with a rolled-up newspaper * 🗞😠 #MicroMen

[@Utahsaint]

7:30 not sure how far into the future Herman travelled in his DeLorean, but he was bang on the money!

[@TheRetroShed]

Love this Microvitec CUB screens. We had them at school and they were awesome!

[@robinhodson9890]

They're still going, and can service & repair old monitors.

[@retroguy59]

Brilliant video. I still have a electron which is regularly used :)

[@sambagogo777]

Let us all marvel at "the amount of sheer bustle" on show!

[@loadretro]

Excellent!!.I've been instantly transported back to the mid 1980's.Is that acorn building shown still around ??

[@cozy_kat]

For the most part yes, now occupied by the Cambridge Water Company. Looks a little different now, but you can still see the old front facia behind the new front glass. Just behind that building sits the Cambridge headquarters of ARM

[@FilipeRinaldi]

The "new building" in this footage became part of the Arm site but it was demolished a few months ago to make room for extending Arm's car parking. Here is the video of it being demolished (the metal cladding was covered at some point in time, but you can see it being exposed by the machines during the demolition): kzbin.info/www/bejne/g3a4cqB4i5aNla8

[@FCastle23]

The ruler for lettering. Wow.

[@jaycee1980]

5:45 man, that logic analyzer.. i wonder how many hundreds of thousands that cost... now you can get them fairly cheap and even hobbyists can afford them

[@richardpurves]

Seen an ABUG interview with Hugo Tyson, who claimed the price was the same as a small house back then.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

What ever happened to the big acorn on the building?

[@MrZeroPage]

Wonderful! Thanks ever so much for sharing guys!!

[@CesareVesdani]

I was born in 1984, so I can born in the decade when Acorn Computers were dominating the market and schools in the UK.

[@hoojchoons2258]

I miss the early computer days when it was all new & exciting. Repairing down to component level was satisfying, then the PC took over and swapping out cards etc was more cost effective :(

[@Super6502]

Simply awesome

[@yabbaso]

This is wonderful.

[@StrayGator]

He doesnt look anything like Martin Freeman!

[@speakertreatz]

he's got the facial expression though, and - if you're not looking at him - the voice and rhythm of speech

[@kaitlyn__L]

Haha, oh wow, the royalty-free Oxygene-esque intro track was unintentionally funny to me. Especially with the BBC’s use of the real Oxygene in Micro Men! That poor bloke doing manual text entry onto a data-sheet… that looks tedious. Edit: hahah, “their next project was almost ready, and happened to almost exactly match the requirements. Only a few changes needed to be made” I guess I can understand Acorn not wanting to broadcast back then that they’d hardly begun building it and acted as if it were further-along to the BBC! Brazenly repeating their lie in a promotional film. Classic. I can’t get over just how much Hermann Hauser sounds like the actor they chose to portray him in Micro Men. It really is remarkably similar. Some sad historic irony here about the “remarkably confident” expansion into the USA market though! I do find it interesting how similar a lot of Acorn’s rhetoric here was to Apple’s - we make the hardware and the software, and have a whole family of peripherals and accessories to make it all even better (and keep you tethered to us). I suppose I had always noticed that aspect to Acorn’s output, with the Econet and the peripherals, or, say, the sidecars on the ARM PCs. But it’s interesting to see Hauser saying it so explicitly, I suppose, even though I shouldn’t be surprised that it was an explicit strategy. I do note the brief showing of the Electron, but no mention of it in the voiceover, nor the mention of the Beeb’s codename of Proton. I hope that woman repeating a phone number down the line was just acting for a known number, rather than Acorn releasing the contact details of one of their customers!

[@jacquesbowman1959]

0223 was the Cambridge area code so probably an alternative direct line into another office

[@speakertreatz]

I thought exactly the same thing, although this promo video may have 'inspired' that Oxegene moment

[@guilherme5094]

Nice 👍!

[@TheStevenWhiting]

0:11 I remember those rulers for CDT, all these years never seen anyone use one in the wild until this video. Looks painful to use.

[@oakumsvideotech]

Played back on a Sharp VCR?

[@TheStevenWhiting]

4:32 I wish. 1 boy to 1 BBC. In our school it was 2 boys to one BBC & I'd always be paired with someone who'd always take over so I'd never get a look in and would just have to watch.

[@cubes123]

I certainly don't recall a classroom with that many BBCs in it in '84! Or later in the decade for that matter.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

@@cubes123 Mine was in Gunnersbury school, in Brentford. We had quite a few but was still 2 boys to one BBC. I remember we had the mouse thing that drew on the floor I believe. Also remember them showing us a big 12" laser disc. But only remember having one year of BBC lessons then it stopped. The turned the room into the technical drawing room eventually.

[@ms-ex8em]

and computers for schools (dont forget that !!) from 1989, 1990, 1991 or 1992 !! computers for schools !!!!! where if u saved up enough coupons u earn a microcomputer for school !!

[@urbanbuddha65]

At 7min32seconds is that a young David Jaggar in the bottom right corner of the screen?

[@richardpurves]

He joined ARM, not Acorn.

[@oddnuts5764]

The optimism is in stark contrast to their situation by the end of 1984 where they had stockpiles of electrons & bbcs unsold. A shame because the bbc micro was far and away the best home computer of it's time.

[@jonathanstein6056]

The narrator sounds more like Chris Curry than Chris Curry, here!

[@scottishwildcat]

I’m assuming the narrator is Cliff Michelmore.

[@StuartQuinn]

Chris has changed a lot more than Hermann.

[@jonathanstein6056]

@@StuartQuinn agreed!

[@jaycee1980]

Man... having to draft all that technical documentation and diagrams *by hand*.. i shudder at the thought when I use EAGLE and AutoSketch just for my hobby stuff!!

[@ms-ex8em]

Lander on the Acorn Archimedes DID have sound - i recall it did have sound thanks........

[@TheStevenWhiting]

Did they forget the S on the logo in reception?

[@StarsManny]

I think their name was acorn computer, but everyone called them acorn computers.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

@@StarsManny They were Acorn Computers Ltd apparently. We can also see this at 4:23

[@4623620]

😁

[@CrazyTobster]

So confident they went broke. Mistakes were made sadly.

[@paulhyland7456]

Hair just looked like that in the 80's.

[@kippie80]

Would be lame propiganda but is is peppered with hard facts about growth .. so unfashionable these days, facts, reality, sun as sun, moon as moon, etc.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

Then the tories came along and let SoftBank buy ARM. Won't be long, I suspect, before they mothball the UK locations. Part of the sale was they had to continue to support it, but I assume that comes to an end at some point.