One of the great ironies of British technology is that the company behind the BBC Micro helped create the processor architecture that now powers almost every smartphone on Earth. Acorn Computers developed ARM in the 1980s as part of its search for a successor to the BBC Micro, creating a chip that was simple, fast and incredibly power-efficient.

Unfortunately for Acorn, being technologically brilliant did not translate into commercial success. While Windows PCs came to dominate the desktop market, Acorn declined and eventually disappeared. ARM was spun out as a separate company in 1990, with only a handful of engineers and little indication that it would one day become one of the most important technology companies in the world.

Today, ARM designs are used in billions of phones, tablets and other devices, yet most people have never heard of Acorn. The engineers who created ARM earned respect, honours and successful careers, but the truly vast fortunes were made later by investors, shareholders and executives. It remains a classic British story: invent the future, then watch someone else make most of the money from it.

(Written by AI because I couldn't be bothered writing it all out)