How an obscure British PC maker invented ARM and changed the world

This CPU's design will become important later, so, you know, don't forget about it.Further ReadingUK museum seeks BBC Micro experts to help maintain its classic ‘80s PCsAcorn had developed a home computer called the Atom, and when the BBC opportunity arose, they started plans for the Atom's successor to be developed into what would become the BBC Micro.The BBC's demanding list of features ensured the resulting machine would be quite powerful for the era, though not quite as powerful as Acorn's original Atom-successor design. This resulted in some fascinatingly half-ass but workable engineering decisions, like having to replicate the placement of an engineer's finger on the motherboard with a resistor pack in order to get the machine to work.Nobody ever really figured out why the machine only worked when a finger was placed on a certain point on the motherboard, but once they were able to emulate the finger touch with resistors, they were just satisfied it worked, and moved on.Here, listen to one of the key engineers tell you himself:The BBC Micro proved to be a big success for Acorn, becoming the dominant educational computer in the UK in the 1980s.Further ReadingThe complete history of the IBM PC, part one: The deal of the centuryAs everyone with any urge to read this far likely knows, the 1980s were a very important time in the history of computing. The Apple Lisa in 1983 presaged the Mac and the whole revolution of the windows-icons-mouse graphical user interface that would dominate computing to come.Acorn saw these developments happening and realized they would need something more powerful than the aging but reliable 6502 to power their future machines if they wanted to compete.