I’m an IT geek. That’s pretty much known.
And what got me into IT, other than the Commodore 64 that I had at home, were the BBC Micro‘s (and Master‘s) that I used at school and, later, college. Indeed I barely touched a PC during this time. And it was my experience during this time that got me a job in IT straight away, no degree required (quite rare at that time in the commercial sector).
The “Beeb” was a superb computer. Well designed and very quick (you quite easily write a commercial program in BASIC. Even a game). They shared a similiar processor to the Commodore 64 (6510 vs 6502) so I could even use my machine code knowledge and write assembler on the BBC as well. Stick a decent monitor and a twin dual-side disk drive on a BBC Master and it was an absolute beast.
Good times.
The chap who designed the BBC Micro went onto design the ARM processor. This spun off to a seperate company (ARM Limited, based in Cambridge) which a good friend of mine works for. The ARM processor is now used in numerous devices, including many mobile phones.
Truly a genius and a bit of a god-like figure to someone such as me.
Which is why it came as a surprise, completely accidentely, to discover that he’s the father of a good friend of mine. Steve Furber is the man. Catherine is his daughter, and a fellow member of Beeston Musical Theatre Group.
He picks up an MBE from the Queen in a couple of weeks time.
Well deserved too.