1983 · Single-Chip Budget Home Computer · Work 983 of 1,871
An electrical shop on a high street in England at dusk in December, along the back wall long white shelves standing bare from end to end, on the counter in front a single slim flat home computer thirty-four centimetres wide of cream plastic, its cream keys plain, smooth and unmarked, along its top edge a dark grey strip with a fine pale grid, a thin cable to a small portable television showing a soft even blue glow, a gloved hand in a camel coat sleeve resting on the keys, a strand of silver tinsel along the counter edge, frost on the shop window and orange street lamps outside.
What it was used for
Cheap offshoot of the BBC Micro, unveiled on 25 August 1983 at the Acorn User Exhibition and sold at 199 pounds, while the BBC Micro stood nearer 400. 1.79 MHz, 32 KB RAM, a full keyboard in a small case. It was aimed at cost-conscious buyers who wanted BBC BASIC without the BBC Micro's price; Chris Curry and Hermann Hauser pitched it squarely against the ZX Spectrum in the under-200-pound bracket. According to former Acorn marketing manager Tom Hohenberg it was built in Malaysia.
What was new
The Electron put almost the whole BBC Micro into one chip. Steve Furber designed a Ferranti ULA that took over video control, memory control, serial I/O and timers; the board's chip count fell from 102 to roughly 12 to 14, and Hermann Hauser spoke at launch of over 2,400 gates (The Register). That same chip became the bottleneck. By October 1983 Acorn claimed orders for more than 150,000 machines against a target of 25,000 a month; WH Smith could stock only 2 London branches. The chip had already delayed the launch by months, and the cause was disputed: Ferranti argued a design fault, Furber traced the screen faults to on-chip noise, fixed by raising the voltage swing by about 50 percent.
What the sources leave open: The pre-Christmas 1983 figures count different things: The Register reports Acorn's own claim of more than 150,000 orders in October 1983, while Tom Hohenberg recalls at Retro Isle 300,000 orders and 30,000 machines built, though he dates this to Christmas 1984. Both are company claims or recollections, not verified delivery figures. No lifetime production figure for the Electron could be substantiated.