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"But what if, instead, you decided to make those CPUs all hail from a barely-known company from a country usually not the first to come to mind as a global lead
by DrBazza 6y ago
"But what if, instead, you decided to make those CPUs all hail from a barely-known company from a country usually not the first to come to mind as a global leader in high-tech innovations (well, not since, say, the 1800s)?"
LEDs, TV, the Bombe & Colossus, microprogramming, first jet liner, first compiled computer language, DNA, caesium clock, first commercial transistor computer, first electronic desktop calculator, the RSA cipher, lithium-ion battery, the WWW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_innovations_and_discoveries#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_innovations_an...
and arguably, LCDs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display#1960s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display#1960s
And in the UK at the time of the BBC Micro, and the Archimedes, Microsoft and Apple were pretty much 'barely-known' companies.
- twic 6y ago"We've had running water for over ten years, we have a tunnel connecting us to Peru, and we invented the cat."
- DrBazza 6y agoEverything went back to black and white in 2020 though.
- mjklin 6y agoThat’s Numberwang! Let’s rotate the board
- zeristor 6y agoThe Little Britain intro from the first series, I'd forgotten it, although I remember finding it amusing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r35GVB_2xmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r35GVB_2xmk
- ksec 6y agoI am glad the first comment on HN is pointing this out. I still think it is unfortunate UK couldn't bring its tech to the next level with IMG, ARM, Icera and arguably Dialog Semiconductor. Or Interesting UniKernel project from Cambridge UK [1]. I mean there are lots of Innovation happening even right now in UK. Both hardware and Software. Edit: And I forgot Raspberry Pi. [1] https://mirage.io https://mirage.io
- laurencerowe 6y ago> I still think it is unfortunate UK couldn't bring its tech to the next level with IMG, ARM, Icera and arguably Dialog Semiconductor. In large part I think it's simply down to the size of the local market. If you're successful in the US you're already 5-10x the size a successful British company. This is in large part why Britain advocated for the creation of the Common Market which it is now inexplicably leaving.
- boxmonster 6y agoI grew up on a beach in California and I'm aware of the amazing scientific and engineering achievements of the UK. I would also like to point the 30th anniversary of the web is on the front page and it was invented by a brit, so this author to me seems like he's trolling.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Lio 6y agoIt's not like ARM is even the only interesting CPU design to come out of the UK. Amongst others, the Transputer was pretty hot back in the day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer
- scoopertrooper 6y agoThe UK was essentially the France of the information technology industrial revolution. It made major technological contributions, but failed to capitalise on them successfully.