Acorn Advert - July 1984

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 why this advert from July 1984's Your Computer still calls the Electron "new".

The late deliveries became a big issue for Acorn as it was left with warehouses full of machines ordered on the basis of Christmas sales but which had actually missed that particular deadline and didn't start arriving until January of the following year.

It was essentially a cut-down version of the BBC Micro and was targetted at the parents of children who were probably using the larger - at more expensive - machine at school. Acorn had been highly successful with various government schemes which were subsidising the cost of micros into schools to the tune of 50%, and had cornered around 80% of the schools market.

Otherwise, this is another in the series of broadly-similar text-heavy adverts that Acorn seemed to like producing.

The Electron retailed for £199, or about £750 in 2024 money.

Meanwhile, Acorn was into its sixth month of trying to break into the US educational market with its BBC Micro. It had set itself a target of $40 million for the first year, but had apparently already booked $50 million in half that time - that's around £180 million in 2024.

Harvey Lawner, general manager of Acorn in the US and based in Woburn, Massachusetts, gave an update of the first half year since September 1983:

"We are progressing very favourably. In fact, we have done far better than we believed possible in the fiercly-competitive education market here".

The company was up against Apple, which dominated the US education sector, and to a lesser extent Atari, but managed to beat both of them when it won a public bid to supply 170 machines to a secondary school in Phoenix, Arizona. Acorn had even shipped an extra 1,000 machines over from the UK to satisfy "ever-increasing demand".

However, it was still early days, and many commentators in the US were warning that the BBC Micro was overpriced and that the British company would "end up with egg on its corporate face". Clive Smith of market-research company Yankee Group, of Boston, continued:

"I'm not sure why they've targetted the education market here. It seems a shortcut to disaster".

Explaining Acorn's apparent - and unexpected - toehold in the US, Lawner continued:

"One of the reasons is because of our track record back in the UK. Americans are still aware of the quality of education to be found in Britain. So when we tell them that 80% of all computers in British schools are Acorns, they take notice. It's an excellent selling point. What we are able to give them are total solutions the like of which they have never seen before"^[1]