Acorn Electron
The Acorn Electron was introduced as a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a price more competitive with that of the ZX Spectrum. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC II together with the operating system. Announced in 1982 for a possible release the same year, it was eventually introduced on 25 August 1983 priced at £199.
The Electron is able to save and load programs onto audio cassette via a cable, originally supplied with the computer, connecting it to any standard tape recorder with the appropriate sockets. It is capable of bitmapped graphics, and can use either a contemporary television set, a colour monitor or a monochrome monitor as its display. Several expansions were made available to provide many of the capabilities omitted from the BBC Micro. Acorn introduced a general-purpose expansion unit, the Plus 1, offering analogue joystick and parallel ports, together with cartridge slots into which ROM cartridges, providing software, or other kinds of hardware expansions, such as disc interfaces, could be inserted. Acorn also produced a dedicated disc expansion, the Plus 3, featuring a disc controller and 3.5-inch floppy drive.
For a short period, the Electron was reportedly the best selling micro in the United Kingdom, with an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 machines sold over its entire commercial lifespan. With production effectively discontinued by Acorn as early as 1985, and with the machine offered in bundles with games and expansions, later being substantially discounted by retailers, a revival in demand for the Electron supported a market for software and expansions without Acorn's involvement. Its market for games also helped to sustain the continued viability of games production for the BBC Micro.
History
After Acorn Computers released the BBC Micro, executives believed that the company needed a less expensive computer for the mass market. In May 1982, when asked about the recently announced Sinclair ZX Spectrum's potential to hurt sales of the BBC Micro, priced at £125 for the 16K model compared to around twice that price for the 16K BBC Model A, Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser responded that in the third quarter of that year Acorn would release a new £120–150 computer which "will probably be called the Electron", a form of "miniaturised BBC Micro", having 32 KB of RAM and 32 KB of ROM, with "higher resolution graphics than those offered by the Spectrum". Acorn co-founder Chris Curry also emphasised the Electron's role as being "designed to compete with the Spectrum... to get the starting price very low, but not preclude expansion in the long term."Development
In order to reduce component costs, and to prevent cloning, the company reduced the number of chips in the Electron from the 102 on the BBC Micro's motherboard to "something like 12 to 14 chips" with most functionality on a single 2,400-gate Uncommitted Logic Array.The operating system ROM locations 0xFC00-0xFFFF contain the details of some members of the Electron's design team, these differing somewhat from those listed in the corresponding message in the BBC Model B ROM:
Additionally, the last bytes of both the BASIC ROM and the Plus 3 interface's ADFS v1.0 ROM include the word "Roger", thought to be a reference to Roger Wilson. The case was designed by industrial designer Allen Boothroyd of Cambridge Product Design.
Release
Reports during the second half of 1982 indicated a potential December release, with Curry providing qualified confirmation of such plans, together with an accurate depiction of the machine's form and capabilities, noting that the "massive ULA" would be the "dominant factor" in any pre-Christmas release. As the end of the year approached, the machine itself was pictured in press reports. With the ULA not ready for "main production", however, the launch of the Electron was to be delayed until the spring.By June 1983, with the planned March release having passed, the launch of the Electron had been rescheduled for the Acorn User Exhibition in August 1983, and the machine was indeed launched at the event. The company expected to ship the Electron before Christmas, and sell 100,000 by February 1984. The price at launch£199remained unchanged from that stated in an announcement earlier in the year, with the machine's nickname within Acornthe "Elk"also being reported publicly for perhaps the first time.
Reviews were generally favourable, starting with positive impressions based on the physical design of the computer, with one reviewer noting, "The Electron is beautifully designed and builtquite a shock compared to the BBC. Its designer case will look great on the coffee table." Praise was also forthcoming for the Electron's keyboard which was regarded as being better than most of its low-cost peers, with only the VIC-20 being comparable. In one review, the keyboard was even regarded as better than the one in the BBC Micro. The provision of rapid BASIC keyword entry though the combination of the key with various letter keys was also welcomed as a helpful aid to prevent typing errors by "most users", while "touch typists" were still able to type out the keywords in full.
Reviewers also welcomed the machine's excellent graphics compared to its rivals, noting that "the graphics are much more flexible and the maximum resolution is many times that of the Spectrum's". The provision of screen modes supporting 80 columns of readable text and graphics resolutions of 640×256 was described as "unrivalled by every machine up to the BBC Model B itself", although the absence of a teletext mode was considered regrettable. Although valued for its low memory usage characteristics in the BBC Micro, one reviewer considered the absence of a "software simulation of a teletext screen" to be a "lazy omission" even if it would have to be "awfully slow and take up piles of memory".
While its speed was acceptable compared to its immediate competition, the Electron was, however, rather slower than the BBC Micro with one review noting that games designed for the BBC Micro ran "at less than half the speed, with very significant effects on their appeal". The reduced performance can be attributed to the use of a 4-bit wide memory system instead of the 8-bit wide memory system of the BBC Micro to reduce cost. Due to needing two accesses to the memory instead of one to fetch each byte, along with contention with the video hardware also needing access, reading or writing RAM was much slower than on the BBC Micro. Reviewers were also disappointed by the single-channel sound, noting that "BBC-style music" and its "imitations of various musical instruments" would not be possible, the latter due to the inability of the sound system to vary the amplitude of sounds.
Despite some uncertainty about Acorn's target demographic for the Electron, some noted the potential for the machine in education given its robustness, but also given its price, noting that the high price of BBC Model B machines seemed "rarely justified by their actual practical applications in schools". The introduction of the Electron was seen as potentially leading to competition between Acorn's different models within the schools market rather than creating a broader audience for them, although the potential for more computers in schools, giving more "hands-on" experience for students, was welcomed. Nevertheless, reviewers anticipated that the Electron would sell well at the lower end of the market, with projected sales of 100,000 units by Christmas 1983, helped by the Electron's software compatibility with the BBC Micro and the already established reputation of its predecessor. With parents potentially being convinced of the Electron's educational value, some reviewers foresaw a conflict between parents and "discerning children", the latter merely wanting to play games and preferring models with sound and graphics capabilities more appropriate for gaming.
Although Acorn had based its expansion into the United States on the BBC Micro, the company did have plans to introduce the Electron at a later time, with Chris Curry having indicated "a very heavy push overseas" involving both the BBC Micro and Electron. A model for the US market was described in an official book, The Acorn Guide to the Electron, but this model was never produced. The Electron was distributed in various other markets and was reviewed by home computing publications in countries such as Norway, West Germany, and New Zealand.
Production and volume delivery
Production difficulties at Astec in Malaysia delayed the machine's introduction, forcing Acorn to look to other manufacturers such as AB Electronics in Wales and Wongs in Hong Kong. By October 1983, Acorn had received orders for more than 150,000 units, but had production targets of only 25,000 a month before Christmas, meaning that the existing backlog would take more than six months to fulfil. Demand for the Electron was high but only two of WH Smith's London branches had inventory. With production yet to reach "full capacity" at Astec, Acorn conceded that only 60,000 units would be sold before Christmas.Additional manufacturing for the Electron had been anticipated to commence as early as the end of November 1983 in Hong Kong, and in January 1984 in Wales, the latter slipping to April 1984 but increasing the production rate to up to 40,000 units a month. Ultimately, manufacturing in Malaysia ceased with the anticipated but unspecified number of units having been produced, this having been originally reported as 100,000 units. Acorn's marketing manager, Tom Hohenberg, admitted in early 1984 that "a lot of the trouble stemmed from the ULA" in getting production to the desired levels, but that such difficulties had been resolved, although Acorn faced an order backlog of almost a quarter of a million units.
As the company increased production during 1984, however, the British home computer market greatly weakened. Hohenberg later noted that after the 1983 Christmas season, Electron deliveries had increased to meet a demand that was no longer there, with the market having "completely dried up". Acorn's Christmas 1984 sales were greatly below expectations and by March 1985 the company had reduced the Electron's price to £129. With the company's unsuccessful expansion into the United States abandoned, Acorn's financial situation had deteriorated sufficiently to prompt Olivetti to rescue the company by taking a 49.30% ownership stake. Renewed efforts were made to sell the machine, bundling it with Acorn's own expansions and software, such as one package adding the Plus 1 expansion, joysticks and a ROM cartridge game to the base machine for a total price of £219. Acorn committed to supporting the machine "until the end of 1986", continuing to supply it to British Telecom as part of the Healthnet communications system, with small-scale manufacturing continuing while existing stocks were being run down.
By autumn, retailers appeared eager to discount the computer, with prices in stores as low as £100, reportedly less than the distributor prices of the summer months. As the Christmas season approached, Dixons Retail acquired the remaining Electron inventory to sell, bundled with a cassette recorder and software, at a retail price of £99.95. This deal, from the perspective of a year later, apparently played a significant part in helping to reduce Acorn's unsold inventory from a value of £18 million to around £7.9 million, and in combination with "streamlining corporate activities and reducing overheads", had helped to reduce Acorn's losses from over £20 million to less than £3 million.
The deal effectively brought to an end Acorn's interest in the Electron and the lower-cost end of the home computing market, but empowered third-party suppliers whose "inventiveness and initiative" was noted as being in contrast with Acorn's lack of interest in the product and the "false promises" made to its users. However, Acorn subsequently released the Master Compact a model in the Master series of microcomputers with fewer BBC Micro-style ports and a similar expansion connector to that used by the Electron with the home audience specifically in mind. Indeed, prior to its release, the Master Compact had been perceived as the successor to the Electron. Superficial similarities between the Compact and Acorn Communicator, together with technical similarities between the Electron and the Communicator, may also have driven rumours of an updated Electron model. A more substantial emphasis on the "home, music and hobby sectors" came with the appointment of a dedicated marketing manager in 1989 following the launch of the BBC A3000 in the Acorn Archimedes range.