Sunday, 19 January 2014

Hidden names in RISC OS 3.10

Programs for Acorn computers usually had an "Info" box that showed the name, purpose, author and version of the program. RISC OS 3 itself had one of these boxes:

I have no idea how I found this out, but if you clicked the middle mouse button on the letters 't', 'e', 'a' and 'm' in "Acorn Computers", the box would cycle through a list of the people who were involved in making RISC OS. It took just under 2 minutes to go through the whole list.

Here's the full list of names:

© Acorn Computers Ltd, 1988
© Acorn Computers Ltd, 1989
© Acorn Computers Ltd, 1990
© Acorn Computers Ltd, 1991
© Acorn Computers Ltd, 1992

Thanks are due to:

Bruce Cockburn
Chris Partington
Jonathan Coxhead
Philip Colmer
Steve Cormie
Andrew Cummins 
David De Vorchik
Tim Dobson
Adrian Godwin
Steve Hunt
Ian Johnson
Lawrence Rust
Ran Mokady
Chris Murray
Edward Nevill
Neil Raine 
Jonathan Roach
Jamie Smith
William Stoye
Roger Wilson

Thanks to:

Tudor Brown
James Bye
Martin Clemoes
Colin Dean
Teresa Downey
David Elworthy
Paul Fellows
David Flynn
Steve Furber
Jonathan Griffiths
Rachel Haigh
Dave Howard
Ian Jack
Richard Manby
Aideen McConville
Harry Meekings
Mike Muller
Harry Oldham
Andrew Powis
Nick Reeves
David Roberts
Arthur Ross
David Seal
Lee Smith
Owen Smith
Gavin Stark
Tony Sumner
Stuart Swales
Paul Swindell
Jon Thackray
Alasdair Thomas
Tony Thompson
Hugo Tyson
Jamie Urquhart
Charles Whyte
Jes Wills

Others:

Aleph One
Graham Anderson
Alex Bienek
John Biggs
David Burling
Dave Caughley
Tim Caspell
Tony Cheal
Digital Services
Neil Gardner
Vic Gibling
Martyn Gilbert
Mark Hall
Mike Hill
Henry Howarth
Richard King
Kechil Kirkham
Paul LeBeau
Rob McKay
Brian Rice
JacquƩ Sanalitro
Sharon Shelley
Graham Smith
Ashley Stevens
Jim Sutton
Peter Watkinson
Colin Watters
John Wilkins

Last and least:

David Bell
Brian Long
Harvey Coleman
David Rees
Malcolm Bird
David Lowdell

Thursday, 2 January 2014

Acorn Development Team

I just found this picture of the Acorn Development Team, taken outside Acorn House in Cambridge:

Acorn Development Team

A text file accompanying the picture says:

This shows just some of the people involved in the development of your computer. Many other colleagues were unable to join us, some of their names are listed elsewhere. Those that appear on the photograph are as follows:

          14    17        22 23  24
                    19  21           25 26       29
    13      15 16 18  20                   27   28 30
01      03  04   05   06   07  08   09   10   11    12
    02

01 John Wilkins
02 Aideen McConville
03 Roger Sale
04 Jonathan Coxhead
05 Amanda Cates
06 Tony Sumner
07 Richard Manby
08 Timothy Roddis
09 Charles Whyte
10 Martin Clemoes
11 Richard King
12 Tony Higgins
13 Edward Brentnall
14 Graham Simms
15 Michael Stephens
16 Ian Johnson
17 Michael Hardy
18 Neal Dench
19 Brian Rice
20 Geoffrey Hitchen
21 Simon Proven
22 Lee Hearnden
23 William Turner
24 Steven Cormie
25 Murray Papworth
26 Mike Challis
27 Doug Heath-Green
28 Alan Glover
29 Terry Owen
30 Dave Dickin

The photograph was taken outside Acorn House by Martin Clemoes.