The Raspberry Pi computer – how a bright British idea took flight

Cambridge scientists thought their £30 computer might find 1,000 customers. Two years on, they have shipped 2.5m unitsIn the end, it took just over 10 months for Felix Baumgartner's skydiving record from 24 miles to be broken. With considerably less publicity, a small cuddly toy named Babbage fell from a height slightly above the Austrian's achievement after ascending to the stratosphere in a hydrogen-filled balloon.The elaborate skydive to a field in Berkshire was accomplished using credit card-sized Raspberry Pi computers which released the toy from the balloon when it reached 31 metres above Baumgartner's record and filmed the descent.It is just one of a multitude of unique projects the bare-boned machine has been used for.Launched in February 2012, more than 2.5m of the computers – which cost about £30 – have now been sold around the world, a prodigious landmark considering the group of scientists behind it thought they might sell 1,000 at most."If you told me I was going to sell 10,000 I would have called bullshit on that," said Eben Upton, co-founder of the Raspberry Pi and the public face of the mini-computer.The idea came in 2006 after Upton and some colleagues in the computer laboratory in Cambridge University shared concerns over their Friday beers at the decline in the number and skills of students applying for computer science classes.Now 35, Upton's digital education began with a BBC Micro home computer, learning programming languages via books and being en...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Raspberry Pi The Guardian Technology sector Sport Computer science and IT News Computing Physics Felix Baumgartner University of Cambridge Education Business Source Type: news