Acorn co-founder on the BBC Micro and the early days of personal computing

Andy Hopper is co-founder of the iconic Acorn Computers and currently head of the computer laboratory at the University of Cambridge. silicon.com's Nick Heath talks to Hopper about the BBC Micro, Acorn's early days and sustainable IT.

The BBC Micro, with its beige box and chunky keys, gave many people in the UK their first taste of personal computing.

Introduced in 1981, the machine was a runaway success for Cambridge-based Acorn Computers, which anticipated it would shift 12,000 but went on to sell 1.5 million, with a BBC being the machine of choice for UK schools.

Co-founder of Acorn Andy Hopper told silicon.com that he believes the BBC - with its easy to grasp Basic programming language - offered an experience that is missing today.

"I love the BBC Micro because of its open architecture, the way it was like a Meccano kit in the digital world, where you could make it into many things," he said.

"In a way it's too bad that the world has moved on. There is not an equivalent open platform today where you can construct something Meccano-style, for example to interest kids."

The BBC Micro went on to sell 1.5 million machines for Acorn (Image credit: Nick Heath/silicon.com)

Acorn was set up in 1978 and as one of its three founders, Hopper still keeps what he calls a "treasure trove" of components from the BBC Micro.

"I helped with some of the chip work, some of the CAD work that implemented the chips for the original machine and some of the networking so I have some of things relating to that. I have chips and disk drives, all those bits and pieces."

Though Acorn Computers produced its last desktop machine in 1998, today one of its former subsidiaries, ARM Holdings, designs the chips found in most mobile phones and some netbooks, bringing ARM revenues of £298.9m during the last financial year.

Hopper is proud of that legacy: "That all dates back to Acorn and the chipwork in the late 70s. We always had ambitions that were pretty grand, we had a view and a confidence and implementation strategy that was pointing in this direction."

When asked whether he had realised at the time that such a company might grow out of Acorn he said: "I had no idea…but it's wonderful."

Today, as well as serving as head of the computer laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Hopper is the chairman of remote computing software maker RealVNC, tracking system maker Ubisense and chip designer Adventiq.

Acorn suffered some setbacks in its early days, such as not producing enough Electron computers to satisfy demand after the machine's launch, and Hopper says that today's technology market is less forgiving of mistakes.

"It was unusual in those days to do it [set up a technology company], where as today it's completely usual. Today the climate of entrepreneurship is commonplace and routine but it's also much more competitive because it is a much more mainstream, midlife industry rather than an early stage industry," he said.

"Therefore while the fruits are bigger and there's more volume today, you have also got to be a little more savvy and a little less lucky."

Andy Hopper says that today's technology start-ups need to be savvy to survive (Image credit: University of Cambridge)

Acorn's success was partly down to the foresight and technical ability of its founders Chris Curry, Hermann Hauser and Hopper, who saw a chance to capture the personal computing market, which had been created with the launch of the Commodore Pet in 1977.

Hopper says that having exceptional people at the core of a company remains as important to its success today as it was back in the late 1970s.

"You can take a very good team, which doesn't have to be huge and if they are brilliant in the first place and properly motivated you can make amazing things happen, you can achieve goals disproportionately to their size," he said.

But he is concerned that research into technologies is being stifled in the UK, which he blames on universities being too focused on subjects that could generate commercial products and lucrative tie-ups with private companies.

"If you want an endorsement of a company for a research project and what you are trying to do might put the whole industry out of business then that is a tension," he said.

"Trying to apply too much constraint on the university system is problematic. It's out of that flexibility and those more quirky individuals that frequently the greatest and most interesting innovations come."

Hopper's own research interests lie in driving forward innovation in the area of sustainable IT.

He envisages a future where networks of sensors will give us our total individual energy consumption and where computing power could be delivered remotely from large datacentres powered by renewable energy.

Hopper sees a transformative role for IT, with devices that switch themselves off when they are not being used, and processing power used to better model global warming and to make areas such as transport and water management more efficient.

"I think sustainability of our societies is important, and I think that computing and comms are tools that will help with that. They are scalable to the whole world and to the developing world in particular," he said.

"You contribute to the wellbeing of people by using digital tools to make their standard of living higher."

It is a seed of an idea that, given time, Hopper hopes will branch into a sustainable way of life for future generations.