Exclusive - Top Acorn Computers luminaries are planning a reunion for former company staff to mark the firm's 30th birthday, drobe.co.uk has learned. Big names including co-founders Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, pictured, will join ace engineers Chris Turner, Sophie Wilson and Laurence Hardwick at the event scheduled to take place in September.According to the group's website, "We are planning an event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the foundation of Acorn Computers. To aid our planning of entertainment and catering, we need to establish how many people are likely to attend.
"The invitation is being extended to anyone who was an employee of Acorn Computers or one of its subsidiary companies in the UK or overseas, and their partners. A small contribution to the costs of the event may be required, and any surplus will be given to a local charity."
Their website's domain name, acornreunited.org.uk, was registered by Howard Fisher, who was involved in the Acorn Business Computer project.
The reunion party is due to take place on September 13, 2008 in Cambridge, the birthplace of Acorn. The company was established in 1978 and produced a number of computers including the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro, the BBC Master, the Acorn Archimedes series and the RiscPC. Acorn's Beeb microcomputer dominated the UK educational computer market during the 1980s and early 1990s. The company, which spun off now semiconductor design giant ARM, was eventually broken up in 1998.
Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry met up to form Cambridge Processor Unit Ltd, which later became Acorn, almost 30 years ago. At Acorn, Sophie Wilson was responsible for BBC Basic, the ARM processor instruction set and Acorn Replay while Chris Turner was the company's chief engineer.
Links
Acorn Reunited website