To understand the Acorn Electron, we first
have to understand the BBC Micro and to understand
the BBC Micro we have to understand the environment
in which these machines were born.
So let's begin with a quick refresher starting
just before Acorn's formation back in 1977.
Chris Curry was working at Sinclair Research,
a company formed by Clive Sinclair to act
as an escape boat whilst the National Enterprise
Board split up Clive's previous company, Sinclair
Radionics.
Clive had placed Chris in charge of this company
whilst everything settled and during that
time Curry had developed the MK14; a very
earlier Microcomputer kit which sold for £39.95.
Seeing the potential with computing whilst
left frustrated by Clive's overpowering management,
Chris decided to setup Cambridge Processor
Unit Ltd with his friend and investor, Hermann
Hauser.
Initially CPU sold components for the fruit
machine industry, but quickly turned their
attention to building the System-1 under the
Acorn brand, used to denote a growing company,
and also because it conveniently came before
Apple in the phone directory.
This was 70s marketing at it's finest.
The System-1, designed by Sophie Wilson (Roger
at the time), was an MK-14 like machine based
around the MOS 6502 CPU and it allowed Acorn
to raise capital whilst developing improvements
to their product.
The System 2 would follow in 1979; a modular
microcomputer aimed at laboratory and industrial
use.
This system would be the base for their first
real home micro, the Acorn Atom.
This machine competed with Sinclair's ZX80,
but offered a larger case and fully functional
keyboard.
Selling around 10,000 units after it's 1980
release, it allowed Acorn to begin development
of their next project, code named the Acorn
Proton.
System 3 Hardware would be the base for this
new machine and it would be poised to be far
superior to Sinclair's ZX81 model released
in 1981.
The rivalry between the two companies was
intense; you can find out more in my Sinclair
vs. Acorn video charting their history.
Handily, around this time in the summer of
1981, the BBC would begin their Computer Literacy
Project, backed by the government, it's goal
was to get UK school children ahead of the
micro computing curve, by providing a weekly
television programme and placing a computer
into as many schools as possible.
The only problem was, they needed a micro
they could brand up and use for this task.
Various companies bidded for the contract,
including Sinclair and Camputer, but by modifying
their Proton design in a very short space
of time, it was Acorn who managed to secure
the project and go on to produce the BBC Micro
starting in December 1981.
Not only securing a deal that would provide
free BBC advertising and promotion, but timing
that would move Acorn ahead in the technological
stakes over the competition.
The BBC Micro's design was led by both Sophie
Wilson and Steve Furber, and was a pretty
advanced piece of kit for the time, sporting
32KB of RAM, a 2MHz 6502 CPU (with optional
Z80 co-processor) and a whole heap of expand-ability.
To incorporate such functionality, the Micro's
case was large and industrial in look, also
featuring a full keyboard and the iconic red
function keys.
There were two inital models, the A, priced
at £235 - a cut down version with less expandibility
- and the B; a fully fledged system priced
at £335.
Acorn initially predicted that the A would
sell better to home and hobby markets, with
the B's going into academic use, however the
B models were by far the biggest seller with
people eager to get a more future proofed
and capable machine.
Increased costs meant the machines would be
re-priced to £299 and £399 respectively,
safely finding a niche in the higher priced
home micro market with families keen to buy
into technology compatible with what their
children learnt at school.
By mid-1982 the affectionately termed "Beeb"
had racked up reasonable sales and was weaving
into the vast majority of UK schools, with
80% having a government subsidised Beeb within
a couple of years.
BYTE magazine termed the model B "a no-compromise
computer that has many uses beyond self-instruction
in computer technology", and with it's adequate
memory and vast array of features including
a Tube interface allowing for the additional
processor, it did everything cheaper machines
could do and more.
These machines included the £60 Sinclair
ZX81 and soon to be released machines such
as the Sinclair Spectrum, Dragon 32 and Commodore
64.
To all extents and purposes Acorn had it made.
Sinclair was mopping up the lower end market,
with the Spectrum initially selling for £125
in it's 16KB variety, easily beating competitor
offerings, whilst the BBC Micro had the educational,
semi-professional and hobby markets.
Even with the Beeb making it into some households
and likewise the new Spectrum machines making
it into some schools, the companies weren't
really stepping on each others toes.
But business is business, and all that would
be about to change.
Some might pin it onto the lingering rivalry
between Curry and Sinclair.
The indelible urge to triumph over his former
employer.
Others might pin it on plain business sense.
But whatever you pin it on, Acorn's next move
would go against the feelings of most of the
Acorn team, including Furber and Wilson, who
wanted to push the business upwards, onto
more advanced territory and greater things.
In June 1982 Hermann Hauser responded to a
question posed about the possibility of the
ZX Spectrum hurting sales of the BBC Micro.
His response was that later that year Acorn
would release a new computer, priced under
£200 that would compete with Sinclair's machine
and trounce it in the capability stakes.
Now, this wasn't something off the top of
Hauser's head, he even hinted at the machine's
name by this stage.
Although given their previous system monikers
of Atom and Proton, it seemed a natural evolution
to move onto Electron.
The idea had actually been conceived by Chris
Curry, after realising the massive gaming
market they were missing.
People were buying the BBC Micro, for sure
- in fact demand was still outstripping supply
(although that was partially attributable
to manufacture delays earlier in the year)
- but most families were keen to jump on the
electronic gaming bandwagon, and the Beeb
just out priced a lot of those customers.
Even those who could afford it, already viewed
it as more of a serious machine.
The Electron would compete directly with the
Spectrum in the home, by reducing the BBC
Micro chipset but still retaining expansion
ability, allowing customers to build up to
a more comprehensive machine if they so wished.
The reduced chipset would ease costs as would
sidestepping the BBC branding and licencing
costs.
Acorn were beginning to feel a little institutionalised
under the BBC, and the Acorn name was still
a consumer obscurity, this then could be the
machine which allowed the Acorn to grow into
something recognisable.
Regardless of the engineering team wanting
to push their technology forward, there was
a good business case to downgrade and simplify.
Although the BBC Micro would sell more then
1.5 million units in it's lifetime, the budget
gaming market was massive and the ZX Spectrum
orders were lready looking on coarse to topple
those figures.
As the BBC Micro model A hadn't sold as well
as anticipated, the solution devised by the
team was to create a simplified model B, with
modular expansion.
To do this it would be essential to reduce
the number of chips used in the BBC Micro
from 102 down to a dozen, including the 6502A
processor.
This was a hell of a task and involved combining
the video, audio and I/O components into a
single Uncommitted Logic Array chip designed
by Acorn themselves.
Lead by Steve Furber, this ULA would become
the most complex custom chip in production
at that time, but it couldn't be completed
without compromises;
One of the first was the removal of Mode 7.
This was the default mode on the BBC Micro,
occupying just 1KB of RAM and allowing high
resolution text.
It was originally incorporated in the Beeb's
spec to allow compatibility with the BBC's
Ceefax service, but it just wasn't possible
to squeeze cost effectively into the design.
A lot of Beeb software was coded in this mode,
allowing colour with minimal memory use.
Standard high resolution mode consumed some
20kb of memory, leaving only 12kb spare.
This meant that instantly, a whole chunk of
the Micro's library would be incompatible
with the Electron, and not only that, but
coders would have a lot less room to squeeze
programs into.
The Beeb's 6845 CRTC chip functionality had
to be trimmed down, this meant that horizontal
hardware scrolling was also missing from the
Electron's inventory.
Sound was also simplified, from the 4 channels
available in the Beeb to a single output,
similar to that of the original Spectrum.
To accommodate for this switch any code from
BBC Basic requesting other sound channels
would be virtualised and either play through
the single channel if it was free or be lost
to all of eternity, if it was in use.
The ULA wasn't the only source of compromise
in the new design however.
In the early 80s technology was evolving rapidly.
The Beeb used 16 16 Kilo-bit chips for memory,
but now 64 Kilo-bit chips were available,
and it was far cheaper to use 4 of these chips
than the 16 used in the Beeb.
However this had quite a drastic side effect
to memory access speed.
The four chips were each connected by a single
bit, resulting in a 4 bit memory bus.
This meant that in order to retrieve 1 byte
of memory, you needed to perform two fetches,
effectively doubling memory access times.
Coupled with this the Beeb's memory speed
was doubled to 4MHz, allowing the CPU and
video circuits alternating access whilst still
keeping everything running at 2Mhz in high
resolution modes.
The Electron's chips could only run at 2MHz,
so in high resolution modes, the memory is
completely unavailable for 40 microseconds
every time the screen refreshes.
A routine that took 10 seconds to run on the
Beeb in this mode would therefore take 43
seconds on the Electron.
In mode 3 it would take 34 seconds and for
low resolution it would be double at 20 seconds.
Aside from these performance issues, the Electron
had a drastically reduced arsenal of ports.
The RS-423 serial, video out, analogue peripheral
and econet ports of the Beeb were missing,
not the mention the base mounted disk drive,
tube interface, 1MHz bus, printer and user
ports.
But what the Electron did have - rather strangely
for a home marketed machine - was two monitor
outs, offering composite and RGB, as well
as a general purpose expansion bus, cassette
din socket, RF out and the external 19V power
supply.
To make up for the socket cull, 7 large plus
expansions were planned.
These would bolt onto the back in a daisy
chain fashion reminiscent of the Texas TI99.
The first of these was intended to be released
at launch, but would arrive a year later.
The Acorn Electron was a machine engineered
to a price point, something Steve admits he's
never been a fan of, preferring to build to
a function and spec point.
But after several months of grueling work,
the Electron's design was finally drawn up,
and despite it's compromises still retained
fairly decent compatibility with the BBC Micro;
The MOS 6502A remained the brains of the operation,
running at 2MHz for ROM access and between
.58MHz and 1MHz for RAM access depending on
the graphics mode.
The 2,400 logic gate ULA manufactured by Ferranti
Semiconductor soaks up most of the core functionality
32KB of RAM is provided in those 4 64KBit
chips
32KB of ROM houses BBC Basic, the same as
the BBC Micro
Various text modes are supported
As well as various graphical modes offering
up to 640x256 pixels with 2 colours.
You can see the considerable memory, some
of these modes consume.
1 channel of 7 octave sound is provided via.
a built in speaker
Dimension wise it's roughly half that of a
BBC Micro, designed by Allen Boothroyd, responsible
for the Atom and Micro, sporting a fairly
robust keyboard, on par with the BBC Micro's
quality construction.
The keyboard also borrowed the keyword input
from the Spectrum, accessible via.
the function key.
Although unlike the Spectrum, this wasn't
a memory saving feature and keywords could
also be manually typed.
One thing that Acorn were known for was design
quality, and it's evident from the motherboard
layout to the case design.
With the plans ready, Chris Curry was confident
the Electron would pose a "very powerful threat
to the dominance of Sinclair and Commodore's
Vic-20".
Acorn was also planning more intense exportation
of the Beeb to America and even drafting up
a portable system based on the Electron for
Mid 1983.
Acorn wanted the Electron ready for Christmas
1982.
The groundwork may have been laid, but due
to the complexity involved, Hauser's original
launch of August 1982 was quickly surpassed.
The first sighting of the new "£150" Acorn
was actually in the December 1982 issue of
Your Computer magazine, but it would be several
months still before this elusive machine emerged,
and the problem lay in that precarious ULA.
As 1983 dawned, Chris Curry promised the machine
would be ready for March 1983.
Anticipation was high and micros were selling
fast.
The likes of Dragon and Oric were now on the
scene and speed was becoming ever crucial,
however there was a problem.
To convince the ULA to display the 640x256
high resolution mode 0, the custom chip had
to run at 16MHz.
Now this was pretty quick.
We're talking twice the speed of Motorola's
16 bit 68000 chip way back in 1982.
Steve, Sophie and the team knew this and took
extreme care designing that part of the chip
to cope with this speed, however on the first
batch of machines, only 1 in 10 functioned,
with the remaining experience fragmentation
and screen break up.
Steve and Ferranti would fight this out over
the summer of '83, with both parties convinced
the other was to blame.
Steve was adamant the chip wasn't working
to specification and finally came to the conclusion
that the only way to fix this would be to
increase the logic swing (this is the voltage
difference used to determine binary 0s and
1s), but this would not be in time for the
Christmas 1983 launch either.
The variance in chip tolerance did at least
allow some machines to start shipping however.
The Acorn Electron was released 1 year late
on August 25th 1983, coupled with a £150,000
TV ad and £3 million of airtime, which was
twice their usual annual marketing budget.
The pitch of a budget home computer, with
gaming ability, tied to the same BBC BASIC
used in schools seemed to strike a chord with
families who didn't want to lump for the low
cost Sinclair models, but couldn't afford
a fully fledged BBC Micro, just as anticipated.
Even in the wake of the Electron's price increase
to £199.
This was also aided by favorable reviews in
magazines.
What Micro said "It has better graphics, a
better keyboard and a more versatile BASIC"
than competitor machines.
Personal Computing Today said that “compared
with other machines - including the Commodore
64 - the speed is acceptable and the colour
and resolution far superior”, although some
other magazines chose to point out it's slow
ability compared to the BBC Micro, rather
than sing it's praises compared to the competition.
The Electron User magazine began print in
September, providing a solid refuge for Electron
fans, with the machine quickly nicknamed "The
Elk".
Development houses had also started coming
on board with Superior Software starting to
convert it's BBC Micro titles over the the
slimline hardware.
Acornsoft were also beavering away moving
over games such as Monsters, Starship Command
and Meteors.
Developers even managed to circumnavigate
the hardware scrolling issues in games like
Planetoid.
Orders quickly started to come in.
So fast in fact that Acorn would have no way
of dealing with them in time for Christmas.
This was intensified by further manufacturing
issues at Malaysian manufacturer Astec, chosen
for their cutting edge production methods.
More manufacturers such as AB Electronics
in Wales and Hong Kong based Wongs were signed
up to push machines through with 25,000 per
month being produced by the end of the year.
However, this was massively short of the 150,000
they needed to get out before Christmas.
In the end only 30,000 would ship in this
time, leading to retailers like WH Smiths
only being able to stock 2 of their London
stores and sending many customers and their
eager children home disappointed.
Orders had racked up to 300,000 by the end
of 1983, and with manufacturing problems fixed
a few months into 1984, Acorn were finally
in a position to start shipping out large
numbers of the Elk, as opposed to the original
planned launch of late 1982.
The only problem was, many of their retail
orders were made on the agreement of fulfillment
before Christmas, as this didn't happen, many
of these outstanding orders were now technically
void.
Still Acorn had some confidence that new orders
would soon clear the stocks in any case, and
pressed on.
The Boom is Over.
Just a month or so after the Electron's launch,
Acorn had put 10% of the company public, listing
on the Unlisted Securities Market for £1.20
a share, and with over 11 million shares available.
The flotation was a reasonable success, and
the influx of cash allowed Acorn to establish
a US subsidiary to try and spread the Beeb
throughout North America.
This was deemed a failure and wound up during
mid 1984.
But this would not be the only set back this
year.
First was a high failure rate among the first
batch of machines.
There were reports it was as high as 25%,
which was hugh, especially compared to Commodore
who rode at 1% and even Sinclair only had
a 5% defective rate.
This was attributed to further failing ULA
chips and machines were quickly replaced with
the new logic swing batch.
More seriously, the market was expected to
expand further during 1984, but the home computer
trade was beginning to implode under it's
own weight.
Demand began to fall, and frustratingly Acorn
had now locked into producing more Electrons
than it could sell, with AB Electronics having
just taken on more staff to produce 100,000
machines.
Acorn were still in a better position than
some companies, with Dragon Data and Camputers
quickly stumbling, but what looked rosy just
a few months prior was starting to wilt at
a dramatic rate.
At one point the Electron looked like it might
be the number one selling UK Micro, but this
was a very short boom as delivery caught up.
Delivery trucks were queuing up at Acorn's
warehouse to drop off brand new Electrons,
but they weren't going out the other side.
Elks were stacking up, leaving the company
with £43 million of unsold stock, equating
to almost a quarter of million units, and
those shares were beginning to look a little
unsavory.
But it wasn't all bad news, yet.
Herman Hauser - the executive in charge of
the Eletron's R&D - won the Recognition of
Information Technology Achievements Personality
of the Year award, with his wife Pamela collecting
the reward from Ian McNaught, presenter of
the BBC's Making the Most of Your Micro series.
Machines were still selling, and games and
peripherals were bolstering the position of
this now somewhat technologically aging machine.
A&F's classic Chuckie egg and Frak! would
both arrive as well as the Plus 1 and Plus
3 interfaces.
The Plus 1 added a joystick interface, 2 cartridge
slots and a parallel port and was very popular
amongst owners priced at around £60.
The Plus 3 provided a 3 1/2" disk drive, either
single or double density, whilst the Plus
2, incorporating Econet functionality never
made it to market.
Adding one of these expansions on the back
would increase the depth of the unit to that
matching the BBC Micro.
They were also bolted onto the bottom, creating
a rigid system, unlike the memory units held
on by Blutac for early Sinclair systems.
With most other manufacturers dying off this
year, it was really a Sinclair, Commodore
and Acorn race in the UK.
The BBC had just renewed their contract with
Acorn and there were plans to start selling
the Electron in America, but the Spectrum
was storming ahead, with a new + model anticipated
for October.
The Commodore 64 was wowing people with it's
advanced graphics and continual advertising,
but the Acorn machines had a different trick
up their sleeves.
The killer app for the BBC Micro, Elite would
land in September 1984, blowing the minds
of small children who would now explore a
vast Cosmos.
David Braben laments that "The video hardware
on the Electron was very poor compared to
the BBC".
The BBC Micro used some clever coding allowing
mode 4 and 5 to be displayed concurrently,
allowing for a more colourful experience,
however the Electron could only muster mode
4 leading to a monochrome experience.
Still we're in space.
Black, endless space, it hardly matters, and
it didn't.
The original Electron release did have a bug
which stopped Galactic Hyperspace from working,
but after it was corrected via.
a mail order service, it was an amazing feat
on the little Elk hardware.
With Christmas 1984 now in their sights, Acorn
for once had the stock, they had the branding
and things could only get better.
Acorn anticipated selling 300,000 Beebs and
Elks over this period, but missed the mark
by a third.
The new Spectrum+ was selling at a much faster
rate, along with the Commodore 64, and even
though these machines weren't new themselves,
the technology in the Elk was starting to
show it's age.
The compromised ULA, 32KB of RAM which was
mostly consumed by video modes and the lack
of software just couldn't compete with the
dominating machines.
Still the Electron had shifted some 180,000
units throughout 1984, and the fan base was
expanding, rather than retracting, even with
the machines still fixed at their £199 price
point; the same price Commodore machines were
selling at, and £70 more expensive than 48K
Spectrums.
But post Christmas would also see the new
Spectrum+ slashed to this low price.
There was now a system with a full keyboard,
and a shed load of games for 35% cheaper than
the Elk.
Acorn responded almost immediately by lowering
the Electron to the same price.
A shrewd move you might think, however investors
saw differently.
The Electron was known to cost more to manufacture
than the streamlined Spectrums, and many in
the City saw the drop as an act of desperation.
Acorn had sales revenues of £40 million during
1983, leading to £5.21 million profit, but
during 1984, the company had lost £10.9 million,
exaggerated by their attempts at US expansion
and acquisition of ICL's school computing
division, and held debts of £47 million.
For investors the company just wasn't viable
anymore.
Share prices had crashed from 193p to just
28p and share trading was suspended just 5
weeks into 1985.
Redundancies ensued and Olivetti stepped in
buying out the company's debt and snapping
up 49.3% of the shares.
Another £4 million investment in June would
see that raised to 79.8% and saw the public
offering of the company reduced from 10 to
6%.
Alex Reid -the appointed emergency chairman
over Chris Curry and Hermann Hauser, suggested
that Acorn "were on the verge of receivership".
To avoiding it, creditors agreed to write
off £7.9 million in debt and the BBC waived
50% of the royalties owed to it from the previous
year.
Still, throughout this turmoil, the Electron
was still selling, and selling pretty fast
at it's new price tag.
This was reduced even further as Olivetti
attempted to shift old stock.
Machines were sold to Dixon's for £50 each,
a substantial loss on manufacturing costs,
with Dixon's selling them on at £100 each.
Similar to how the Dragon 32 story played
out, this opened up a whole new swathe of
customers to the Electron.
The educational world of BBC Basic was now
open for the masses, and the masses snapped
it up.
Figures released by AGB Market Research placed
the machine at number two in computer sales
charts, with a 15% market share, equal to
that of the Commodore 64.
The Spectrum had almost double at 28%, but
it heralded a new wave of software and gaming
talent who managed to squeeze remarkable things
out of the hamstrung machine.
Peter Scott was one of those programmers who
despite the difficulties of porting BBC Micro
software over to the slower, 1 channel audio
hardware, relished the challenge.
Coders like Scott starting programming games
for the Electron, which were cross compatible
with the BBC Micro, this meant a decent game
could be played on both systems rather than
crippling a good BBC game to work on the Elk.
Here are some of the best games to make it
to the Electron platform;
Killer Gorilla
Every machine had to have one.
This is a Donkey Kong clone released in 1983
that plays and looks the part, even with somewhat
fiddly movements.
Chuckie Egg
A conversion of the BBC Micro classic.
Featuring the realistic physics of Nigel Alderton's
Beeb incarnation.
It's slightly slower, but plays just as well.
Frak!
An endearing platformer where you have to
guide a swearing caveman called Trogg through
perilous levels and plaforms.
As part of copy protection, illegal copies
of Frak! would play the Benny Hill theme tune.
Repton
A diamond seeking differ affair, influenced
by Boulder Dash and created by Tim Tyler,
this was Superior Software's biggest seller,
shifting some 125,000 units over it's lifetime.
Elite
Despite the hardware limitations, this is
a very good version of Elite.
There are only 5 ships, compared to the BBC's
6 on tape and 18 on disk.
The disk based missions are also missing.
But that can all be forgiven.
Developed on a borrowed Electron, David Braben
and Ian Bell attached a signed note to the
inside of the Electron case they wrote the
game on.
So if you've got one, maybe now's the time
to open her up and check.
The Last Ninja 2
A master class of how to cram a 500KB multi-load
game into just 35KB.
Fluid animation, defined visuals.
This is really a work of art by Peter Scott.
Exile
Peter Irvin and Jeremy Smith created an amazing
action-adventure game with Exile.
The memory restrictions meant non graphical
data had to be crammed into the screen buffer,
but this meant for a large game, spot on physics,
and some impressive software scrolling.
The graphical flicker common on most Elk games
is another quirk of memory constraints meaning
most games had to draw directly on screen
rather than in a concurrent page buffer.
Like Trogg, this game also manages to push
1 bit sampled speech through the Acorn's single
channel.
Sim City
Yup, fitting in just a few kilobytes of memory
is Sim City.
A massive disk based game on the Beeb, but
here it is on tape, and playing pretty damn
well, all things considered.
This was one of the machine's last games,
but also Peter Scott's most impressive conversion.
The total lifetime game sales for the Electron
would exceed those of the BBC Micro, with
somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 titles produced
for the machine.
Similar to the Spectrum and Commodore 64 titles
continued to be sold for the machine in the
early 90s, the only difference being the Spectrum
and Commodore machines continued to be manufactured.
The Electron just clung on from the left over
stocks of 1985, with it's passionate user
base.
The Electron User magazine would finally give
up the ghost in June 1990, with an shift to
an increasing amount of user generated content
in the final years.
Spin offs
As well as the Plus modules there were various
spin offs and accessories, we had the Electron
branded Data-Recorder of course, which looked
sublime next to the original hardware.
There was also a mode 7 add on by Jafa Systems
which allowed the micro to, yup, display the
BBC's mode 7.
There were also a couple of performance modifications
such as the Slogger Turbo Board.
This was actually a hack devised by Acorn
which moved the lowest 8kB of RAM outside
of the ULA's reach.
This allowed the CPU to access it at 2MHz,
and if it had been incorporated from the go
it could have doubled the amount of motion
possible in games and saved modes 0 to 3 from
being almost uselessly slow due to the shared
memory timings.
There were also things like the VoxBox adding
speech synthesis and even a second processor
produced by PMS.
A spin offs was also created called the BT
Merlin M2105.
This was a debadged Electron connected to
an expansion featuring a modem, and printer
interface.
This was used throughout Interflora shops
to transmit data and was an early pre-cursor
of the internet.
33 years since it's release, the budget Acorn
is still a machine which divides opinion.
Some see it as a crippled and unnecessary
version of the BBC Micro with Steve Furber
acknowledging it technically performed as
well as could be hoped, and looked the part,
but was a commercial disaster, if mainly because
of the manufacture issues.
Others, Chris Curry included, never regretted
the machine, considering it a "terrific product"
in the face of a huge technical challenge.
It was built for a particular growing sector
of the market, and for those who bought it
on those terms, it was cherished.
The fan base that smashed into the 90s and
continues to this day, is surely testament
to that very opinion.
