Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry founded Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridgeshire in 1978. Production included the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro and the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn is best known for its BBC Micro model B computer and its involvement in the BBC's Domesday Project around 1984-1985. Many British IT professionals gained their early experiences on Acorns, which were technically advanced when compared with more commercially successful hardware. Acorn Computers Ltd's subsidiary company Arm Ltd worked with Apple to develop the RISC chip. Another subsidiary, Online Media, pioneered set top boxes and video-on-demand, but the company was broken up from 1998 and ceased trading in 2000.

Northern Micromedia was a computer resources company created to develop software programs for educational purposes. Northern Micromedia also had input from the North East Primary Computer Users Group (NEPCUG) in developing programs including a series called "All About Me" and "All About Us".

Microelectronics Education Support Unit (MESU) was created to address the new emerging Information Technology revolution taking place in schools. The Department for Education and Science set up the Information Technology in Schools initiative. As part of this MESU organised national conferences for the different subject advisory teachers, during this various resource packs were developed and provided to the teachers.