Acorn adverts

Introducing Acorn: A professional MPU card

This is probably Acorn's very first advert - it does indeed say "introducing Acorn" - and appeared just a few months after the company's founding as Cambridge Processor Unit (CPU)...

Three Trumps from Acorn: The Acorn Microcomputer

Acorn was founded as Cambridge Processor Unit (CPU) in November 1978 by Hermann Hauser, who had moved to the UK from Vienna at the age of 15, and Chris Curry - a former Science of...

Acorn Computer: Four of a kind!

It's another early advert from Acorn Computer - the trading name of Cambridge Processor Unit Limited (CPU), the company set up in 1978 by Chris Curry - formerly of Sinclair Radion...

"The perfect lead.. Acorn Microcomputer System 1"

Acorn's "System 1" - formerly known just as the Acorn Microcomputer - was launched in March 1979 and appears here in an early-1980 advert selling for £75 in kit form (or about £45...

Acorn Atom - from Acorn Computer

This was Acorn's first advert for its first full consumer-oriented micro - the Acorn Atom. The Atom was a 6502-based machine and was available primarily in kit form. It was a nat...

Unique in concept - the home computer that grows as you do!

The Acorn Atom was a 6502-based 8-bit computer that in its basic version managed to pack even less RAM than the VIC-20: 2K compared to 3.5K. However, it was very modular and so ...

Important notice to all micro-computer purchasers: The BBC Micro-computer system

This is perhaps the advert that really started it all for Acorn, at least in terms of the Acorn Proton, a.k.a. the BBC Micro. It announced the upcoming availability of the new BB...

The BBC Microcomputer System: The Shape of Things to Come

From this attractive A3 sales brochure is the quote "Amongst the shifting sands of computer technology the BBC Microcomputer is here to stay". And it was, in its various guises, ...

Acorn Electron

This sales brochure, featuring a very Salvador Dali-esque painting including a Rubik's Cube - one of the defining icon of the 1980s - was for the Acorn Electron, sometimes known a...

Three out of every four computers going into schools are BBC Micros

Acorn churned out a lot of adverts around this time which were broadly similar: a BBC Micro doing something, with reams of text explaining it. This one - whilst even more wordy t...

A two-minute operation turns your BBC Micro into the heart of a word-processor

The Acorn Model B BBC Micro was quite a big thing in the UK, although didn't do much outside its home market. Its popularity in the UK was largely thanks to a unique collaborati...

Kenneth Kendall: Now in chip form

This advert is for a speech synthesis chip for the BBC Micro which used the voice of one of the greats of 1970s television news broadcasting - Kenneth Kendall. It's a nice bit o...

BBC Micro: Not all computers stay at home

This was one of several similar adverts for the BBC Micro which ran for a few months. They all follow a pattern of showing various things that the BBC - aka Proton - was good at, ...

Free software, only £225

Looking much like its contemporary - the Prestel adapter - and with the same BBC Micro case-matching shape, Acorn's new Teletext adapter was perhaps better value as at least the c...

The New Electron from Acorn. Ask any child at school why it's worth £199

The Electron was first announced in 1982, launched in 1983, but was beset with production delays which meant it didn't really start shipping until early 1984. That could explain ...