You are here:
A short history of the Raspberry Pi
06 September 2012
After finishing his PhD at the University of Cambridge, Eben was working as director of studies, responsible for talking to schools to get more computer science undergraduates in. When he went to Cambridge in 1996, there was a 6:1 ratio of applicants to places and you could rely on those admitted having a deep understanding of how computers worked. Ten years later, the application ratio had dropped to 2:1 or 3:1, and although they could still find 80 to 90 students each year, the trend was worrying. Those entering the course also had much less impressive technical skills, Eben said. Whereas there used to be one or two people who had done some assembly language programming, now it was mostly about HTML. That creates huge challenges with teaching, because if you have to explain basic stuff at the start, the course either gets squeezed or extended to cover the in-depth stuff graduates should learn.
Eben learned to program like I did, playing on 8-bit computers and writing simple programs for them. When 8-bit computers evolved into games consoles, we lost a lot of that ability to tinker, because their business model is that they’re designed to be unprogrammable, Eben said. PCs can be programmed, but you have to want to get the tools and documentation to do that. “It’s a 10 minute barrier, but lots never cross it,” said Eben.
So he drew up a blueprint of four things that would come to define the Raspberry Pi:
- It had to be interesting for things other than programming.
- It had to be robust, so it could be pushed into a school bag hundreds of times without getting damaged.
- It had to be cheap, like a school text book. The target price was $25.
- It had to come with all the tools needed to program on it.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation was incorporated as a private company limited by guarantee and registered with the charities commission.
In the 1980s, the BBC Micro was a computer that met all the Pi Foundation's objectives, and gave many people their first taste of programming and electronics. Originally, the foundation wanted the Pi to be the new BBC computer and they had discussions with the Beeb but it became clear that this would be impossible because the BBC can’t be seen to compete with commercial ventures today. A final attempt to get the BBC’s endorsement was to reach out to BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones, who Raspberry Pi Foundation trustee David Braben knew. Cellan-Jones put a video on his blog, and two days later it had go 600,000 views.
“It was great for two days,” said Eben. “I spent two days pressing F5. Look how popular I am! Then I realised I had promised 600,000 people I could build a $25 computer. I had no idea whether I could keep that promise.”
He did know the costs added up, but he didn’t know how to go about mass production. Eben was working at Broadcom by now, and they built the first ones as a favour. The six trustees funded the working capital to make the first large batch of 10,000 in China, starting by doing 2,000 at a cost of $50,000. The level of interest was phenomenal, though: tens of thousands of people downloaded the alpha SD card image from the website even though they had no idea when they might get a device to run it.
It became clear that in batches of 10,000 it would take years to satisfy demand, so they instead moved to a model of licensing the design to RS Components and Element 14, who now provide the working capital and manage production and customer service. One person asked whether these companies make a worthwhile margin given how cheap the Pi is. “Charity is not scalable,” said Eben. “Sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money. Everyone in the value chain makes enough money without having to say this is part of their CSR (corporate social responsibility programme). Some make less than they would in an ideal world.”
That’s given them the ability to scale rapidly, and he expects them to have reached close to one million sales by the end of 2012. “We accidentally made a computer company,” said Eben. It has a fixed cost base of £500 per month for the web hosting and no employees, although clearly lots of people (including Eben’s wife Liz) are investing a lot of time in the venture.
He said it will be a couple of years before he knows whether the Pi is solving the problem it was created to address, and the top priority will be to optimise Scratch so that it runs faster.
Dip into the blog archive
June 2005 | July 2005 | August 2005 | September 2005 | October 2005 | November 2005 | December 2005 | January 2006 | February 2006 | March 2006 | April 2006 | May 2006 | June 2006 | July 2006 | August 2006 | September 2006 | October 2006 | November 2006 | December 2006 | January 2007 | February 2007 | March 2007 | April 2007 | May 2007 | June 2007 | July 2007 | August 2007 | September 2007 | October 2007 | November 2007 | December 2007 | January 2008 | February 2008 | March 2008 | April 2008 | May 2008 | June 2008 | July 2008 | August 2008 | September 2008 | October 2008 | November 2008 | December 2008 | January 2009 | February 2009 | March 2009 | April 2009 | May 2009 | June 2009 | July 2009 | August 2009 | September 2009 | October 2009 | November 2009 | December 2009 | January 2010 | February 2010 | March 2010 | April 2010 | May 2010 | June 2010 | August 2010 | September 2010 | October 2010 | November 2010 | December 2010 | March 2011 | April 2011 | May 2011 | June 2011 | July 2011 | August 2011 | September 2011 | October 2011 | November 2011 | December 2011 | January 2012 | February 2012 | March 2012 | June 2012 | July 2012 | August 2012 | September 2012 | October 2012 | December 2012 | January 2013 | February 2013 | March 2013 | April 2013 | Top of this page |