Imagesource: https://youtu.be/SrayIPh22Dk

The Acorn Electron celebrated its 40th birthday a few weeks ago and has been unfairly underrepresented in our magazine.

The younger sibling of the BBC Micro had an impressive presence in the market with an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 units sold. However, Acorn ceased its production in 1985. After Sinclair heated up the competition with the ZX Spectrum, the Acorn executives decided to launch a stripped-down version of the Beeb into the mass market, aiming to outpace the Spectrum but without cannibalizing their own BBC Micro.

The resulting machine was surprisingly capable. If it weren't for its mere 4-bit wide access to RAM, the Electron could have easily rivalled the Micro in almost every respect. Notably, the machine's graphical capabilities were impressive for its time.

@BytesRetro, known to some from his eponymous YouTube channel, used the machine's birthday as an opportunity to pay it the tribute it deserves. The video competently covers the history and technical details of the Electron, and it's so engaging that we can wholeheartedly recommend it.