Acorn's Archimedes computer has received a lot of publicity lately -- indeed Acorn is rumoured to have got rid of half its staff by way of celebration -- so we decided to give the machine a test drive.
The Archimedes is clearly a pioneering machine with a far greater arithmetical ability than its predecessors the Pythagoras and the Plato. For instance, it is able to calculate pi more accurately than ever before (showing that it lies between 22/7 and 223/71), and has a far greater understanding of large numbers (for example, it gave us a pretty good estimate of the number of grains of sand on the beach).
The Archimedes is also highly water-resistant. When we accidentally dropped it in the bath, it heaved itself out again, and printed the error message "Eureka", before going on to complete some calculations concerning the forces on a submerged body.
The Archimedes did however show itself to be a potential fire hazard. This became plain when it was executing the Syracuse algorithm: for reasons which are not entirely clear to us, it set fire to the curtains with the aid of a small built-in mirror and had to be turned off at once.
Generally a useful machine for anyone with access to large quantities of water, but less useful in dry conditions.
"Euclid"
Jonathan Partington, December 1987.