Let’s take a trip down memory lane to when your author was still a child. One L glorious summer day, after a short car ride and £1,600 (that’s £3,400 in 2023 pounds) spent, we returned home with a couple of rather large boxes. Inside these boxes were a keyboard, mouse, cables, monitor and an Acorn A5000. This glorious computer started an interest in computing that continues to this day, having already spanned the best part of 30 years, and shows no sign of disappearing.
Over the next four pages, we will be discussing the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation, for readers who are outside of the UK) and its Computer Literacy Project, Acorn Computers and the computers it designed, as well as how to emulate these devices and then how to rescue data from original disks.
During the early ’80s, the BBC began a project to educate the general public about computing. The BBC spoke with a number of manufacturers before deciding to partner with Acorn Computers. The BBC produced many TV programmes, magazines and other educational materials, while Acorn Computing designed and built the hardware. This ambitious project spanned a number of years and over a million devices were sold. Schools across the UK used BBC computers, due to the standardised hardware and educational materials that were made available.
