The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational / home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd.

At its peak, the Electron was the third best selling micro in the United Kingdom, and total lifetime game sales for the Electron exceeded those of the BBC Micro.

The hardware of the BBC Micro was emulated by a single customized ULA chip designed by Acorn in conjunction with Ferranti.

Unlike the BBC Micro, the Edge-connector on the rear of the machine exposed almost all the Bus lines, but not all.

( via the total number of ports that the BBC Micro had, it exposed all lines )

Due to needing two accesses to each chip instead of one, and the complications of the video hardware also needing access, reading or writing RAM was much slower than on the BBC Micro.

The Electron was developed during 1983 as a cheap sibling for the BBC Micro with the intention of capturing the low-cost Christmas sales market for that year.

This was a blow from which the machine never fully recovered, although games sales for it would ultimately outstrip those of the BBC Micro.

This enabled the Electron to achieve the same functionality as that provided by the Expansion-ROM slot on the bottom-left of the BBC Micro B keyboard.

Because the WD1770 is capable of single density mode and uses the same IBM360 derived floppy disc format as the Intel 8271 found in the BBC Micro, it was also possible to run a DFS filing system with an alternate ROM, such as the P. R. E. S AP4 interface.

This behavior was the same as on the BBC Micro.

This made it possible to connect a 5¼ ” floppy disc drive as used by BBC Micro owners or a more common 3½ ” drive.

By providing extra storage this modification also allowed some games and applications intended for the BBC Micro to function on the Electron despite the lack of a native Mode 7.

Of the capabilities present in the BBC Micro but absent from the Electron, the teletext-style mode 7 was particularly conspicuous because of the very low memory usage in that mode ( just less than 1 kB ) and the high number of BBC programs that used it.

The first used the same graphics processor as the BBC Micro in mode 7 — the SAA5050 — but used software to ensure that it was fed with the correct graphics data.

Although this produced a mode 7 that barely impacted upon CPU performance and gave the same visual quality as the BBC Micro, it remained compatible only with software that used the ROM routines for outputting text and graphics and still used 10 kB of memory for the display.

The Electron is widely misquoted as operating at 1. 79 MHz after measurements derived from speed testing against the thoroughly 2 MHz BBC Micro for various pieces of ' common software '

Like the BBC Micro, the Electron was constrained by limited memory resources.

The traditional BBC Micro publishers such as Acornsoft, Superior Software and Micro Power offered the widest support.

See also the list of Acorn Electron games for a fairly comprehensive list of games published for the machine and: Category: BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games for a list of games with information on Wikipedia.

In the UK, the BBC Micro based OBBS software, available from Pace for use with their modems, optionally allowed for colour and graphics using the Teletext based graphics mode available on that platform.

* The BBC Micro home computer from 1982, built for the BBC by Acorn Computers Ltd

BBC World News America used to be aired as a reduced length, tape-delayed version at 00: 30 UKT.

Jenny Abramsky had originally planned to have a television version of the informal news radio channel BBC Radio 5 Live, or a TV version of Radio 4 News FM both of which she had run.

A full three minute version of the countdown music was made available on BBC News Online and David Lowe's own after a remix on 16 May 2006.

An international version of the countdown was launched on BBC World News on 5 September 2005 featuring more international content and similar music.

A version also exists for the BBC Micro on public domain though never officially released.

A version of " Two Tribes " was originally recorded for a BBC John Peel session in October 1982.

However, BBC books such as The Infinity Doctors and Unnatural History imply that the Doctor's origin is complex and that every version is somehow " true " ( such as Susan's claim in the original version of An Unearthly Child that she was born in the 49th century ).

The BBC understands € 500 million (£ 440M ) will become available to make the extra purchase, taking Europe's version of GPS from 18 operational satellites in the next few years to 24.

There is no Island-specific opt-out of the BBC regional news programme North West Tonight, in the way that the Channel Islands get their own version of Spotlight.

In the original series, which ran on Radio 4 from 1973 – 83, no adaptation was made of the seminal Gaudy Night, perhaps because the leading character in this novel is Harriet and not Peter ; this was corrected in 2005 when a version specially recorded for the BBC Radio Collection was released starring Carmichael and Joanna David.

There is also a 90-minute BBC radio version, starring Richard Pearce ( BBC Radio's Tintin, as well ) as John Trenchard.

The book has been adapted for film and television a number of times, including a 1981 serial for TV directed by Rodney Bennett ; a 1995 movie adapted by Emma Thompson and directed by Ang Lee ; a version in Tamil called Kandukondain Kandukondain, released in 2000 ; and a 2008 TV series on BBC adapted by Andrew Davies and directed by John Alexander.

In 2002 a two-person version of Bourne's design was built for the BBC TV programme Building the Impossible by Mark Edwards, and successfully rowed under water at Dorney Lake, Eton.

* Sweeney Todd ( 2006 ), a BBC television drama version with a screenplay written by Joshua St Johnston and starring Ray Winstone in the title role and Essie Davis as Mrs Lovett.

* BBC 1972 version w / Nicol Williamson & wife Jill Townsend at IMDB

An edited version of " Club Country " appeared in the second series finale of the BBC drama Ashes to Ashes, set in 1982.

In 1991, the BBC broadcast a new version of John Barton's ' The War that Never Ends ', which had first been performed on stage in the 1960s.

The Flower Pot Men is a British children's programme, produced by BBC television, first transmitted in 1952, and repeated regularly for more than twenty years, which was produced in a new version in 2000.

The four-act version was first played on the radio in a BBC production and is still sometimes performed.

In 1977, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the first radio adaptation of the four-act version of the play ; directed by Ian Cotterell, it featured Fabia Drake as " Lady Bracknell ", Richard Pasco as " Jack Worthing ", Jeremy Clyde as " Algernon Moncrieff ", Maurice Denham as " Rev.

In 1941 BBC radio presented a radio play version, and in 1948, another television adaptation – this time of the entire play, running to ninety minutes – was screened by the BBC.