Acorn Computers Limited 1978 - 2015

occupation:
Manufacturer
Nationality:
British
born in:
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, United Kingdom

Acorn Computers Limited was an English computer manufacturer sometimes referred to as the "British Apple". The company was founded in Cambridge in 1978 and were known for their Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro and the Acorn Archimedes computers. Many IT professionals trained on these computers as they were fairly technically advanced, especially the BBC Micro computer which dominated the UK educational computer market in the 1980s.

The company had a few subsidiaries including Arm Ltd. and Online Media which pioneered set top boxes and video-on-demand. The company also worked with Apple to develop RISC chip.

In 1998, Acorn was broken up into a number of indpendent operations and was taken private by MSDW in 2000 which effectively ended the company. However, it did continue to some extent until 2015 when it was officially dissolved.