Acorn Advert - May 1979

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) in November 1978.

The first product on offer was the Acorn professional MPU card - later called the Acorn Controller - and is a "general purpose industrial controller" in a Eurocard format, running with MOS Technology's 6502 CPU - the same CPU used in the contemporary Commodore PET, Apple II and Microtan 65, among others.

However, it also mentions that by adding a Eurocard hexadecimal keyboard and a cassette-tape interface to the Acorn, it was possible to create the Acorn Microcomputer, which was essentially a stand-alone microcomputer, albeit one without a case.

The controller along with the Acorn Microcomputer - which would become known as the System 1 - plus various memory modules, VDU cards and ROM software cards, remained as Acorn's bread-and-butter until the company's breakthrough Atom in the spring of 1980.

The complete micro was available as a kit for £70.20, or ready-assembled for £81, which is about £580 in 2025.