''Electron User'' was a magazine targeted at owners of the

Acorn Electron The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a p ...

microcomputer. It was published by Database Publications of Stockport, starting in October 1983 and ending after 82 issues in July 1990. Initially it was included as a 16-page pullout supplement to '' The Micro User'' but after four such editions it became a standalone title and within a year had grown to an average length of around 64 pages. The focus was news stories,

type-in program A type-in program or type-in listing was computer source code printed in a home computer magazine or book. It was meant to be entered via the Keyboard (computing), keyboard by the reader and then saved to Compact Cassette (data), cassette tape or ...

s and software reviews. It also contained cheat codes and a long-running column on

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

s initially by "Merlin" in a column entitled "Merlin's Cave" and subsequently by "Pendragon". Its advertisers included the top BBC/Electron games distributors of the day, such as

Acornsoft Acornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers, and a major publisher of software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. As well as games, it also produced a large number of educational titles, extra computer languages and business and u ...

and Superior Software. Often the April-dated edition of the magazine included an

April Fools' Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may b ...

joke, generally consisting of a short

machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a ver ...

type-in listing which claimed to do something extremely useful and of wide interest but which in fact printed APRIL FOOL on the screen. Examples included: *a program to predict what text the user would type next *a program to compile

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

programs directly into machine code leveraging the machine's BASIC interpreter *a program to display colours on a

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochr ...

screen by rapidly modulating the pixels (citing a recent '' Tomorrow's World'')

References

External links

Acorn Electron World website
including complete archive of page-by-page scans of all issues of ''Electron User''
Acornmags Electron User section
* Archived Electron User Magazines on the Internet Archive Home computer magazines Defunct computer magazines published in the United Kingdom Magazines established in 1983 Magazines disestablished in 1990 Monthly magazines published in the United Kingdom Magazines published in Manchester {{UK-sci-mag-stub

See also

References

External links