The character arc of Sophie Wilson
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born in June 1957 in Leeds to two schoolteachers, and raised in a North Yorkshire village. Between then and now sit electronic systems built for a research lab before university, Selwyn College Cambridge from 1976, a summer project that electronically controlled feed for cows, a backer who told her to build a better microcomputer than the one on sale, a prototype produced in a single week because two colleagues were each told the other had agreed to it, the BBC Micro and BBC BASIC, an instruction set begun in October 1983, a processor that worked first time on 26 April 1985, and a damehood of the trade in 2019. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Sophie Wilson?
It worked the first time they switched it on. It is in your phone now.
She was born in Leeds to schoolteacher parents, her father specialising in English and her mother in physics, and grew up in the village of Burn Bridge in North Yorkshire. After Harrogate Grammar School she went up to Selwyn College, Cambridge in 1976, read mathematics for two years and switched to computer science for her final year. Before university she had already designed and built two electronic systems for a fibres research laboratory near her home.
In the summer of 1977, after her first year, she designed a small system around a 6502 microprocessor which was used to electronically control feed for cows. That is a real and unglamorous engineering job, and it is what started everything: the cow feeder and her paper designs for a more general machine caught the attention of Hermann Hauser, then a Cambridge postgraduate. He backed her to stay in Cambridge over the summer of 1978 to see whether she could make the design real. A microcomputer kit had just launched in the city, and she was convinced she could do better. He encouraged her to try, using parts from it.
Hauser and Chris Curry set up a company in December 1978. Its first customer needed controllers for fruit machines, and she designed a device to stop cigarette lighter sparks triggering payouts, which is the sort of work a young engineer actually does. Meanwhile her computer design, with a cassette interface by Steve Furber, became the Acorn Micro-Computer. She joined the company in 1979.
The famous week came in February 1981. The BBC wanted a reference machine for a television series and the government-backed option had failed. Curry offered the BBC a prototype of a machine that did not exist. Hauser then told her and Furber each that the other had agreed a prototype could be built in a week. They designed the board and the components from Monday to Wednesday, with fast memory chips sourced directly from Hitachi, had a prototype built by Thursday evening and working on Friday morning, and she ported an operating system onto it in time to show it drawing a line on a high resolution screen before the BBC arrived. It became the BBC Micro, and she wrote its operating system and BBC BASIC, with long variable names, repeat loops and multi-line procedures with local variables. She has described the era as a unique moment in time when the public wanted to know how this stuff works and could be shown and taught how to program.
In October 1983 she began designing the instruction set for one of the first reduced instruction set processors, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM1 was delivered on 26 April 1985 and worked first time. By 2012 that architecture was in 95 per cent of smartphones. She also designed Acorn video architecture and its codecs. She was later chief architect of a processor at Broadcom, becoming a research fellow and director there in 2001. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2009 and of the Royal Society in 2013, was given a Computer History Museum Fellow Award in 2012 with Furber for the BBC Micro and ARM, a Lovie Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, an honorary fellowship of Selwyn College and the Royal Society Mullard Award in 2016, and a CBE in 2019.
The moments
Sophie Wilson's timeline.
The 1950s
Born in Leeds
Everyday. Two schoolteachers, English and physics.
The 1970s
Two systems before university
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She was building working systems before she matriculated.
Selwyn College
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Maths for two years, then a switch.
A machine to feed cows
Milestone, and it changed everything. The most important cow feeder in computing history.
Go back to the course, or build the machine
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: stay and build it, taken, or go home for the summer. Her design became the company first computer, then the BBC Micro, then the ARM instruction set.
Somebody tells her to build it
Milestone, and it changed everything. One person looked at the cow feeder and said go further.
A company, and a fruit machine
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Her first commercial job was stopping people cheating fruit machines.
The Acorn Micro-Computer
Milestone, and it changed everything. Her design became the company first product.
The 1980s
A prototype in one week
Milestone, and it changed everything. Their boss lied to both of them, and they built it in five days.
BBC BASIC
Milestone, and it changed everything. She wrote the language a generation of British children learned on.
A unique moment in time
Milestone, and it changed everything. Her own words for what the BBC Micro was.
She starts the ARM instruction set
Milestone, and it changed everything. One person, designing the instruction set from scratch.
It works first time
Milestone, and it changed everything. They switched it on and it worked, which almost never happens.
The 1990s
Video, and the codecs
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She did the video architecture too.
The 2000s
Chief architect at Broadcom
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The Acorn line, carried into another company.
The 2010s
Royal Society, and Royal Academy
Milestone, and it changed everything. Both academies, and the museum award with Furber.
Commander of the Order
Milestone, and it changed everything. Every honour the field has, eventually.
The instruction set she began in October 1983 is in the device you are reading this on, and in almost every other one. What she set moving started with a cow feeder and a young postgraduate who looked at it and said she should try to build something bigger.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
Hers turned on a summer job designing a machine to feed cows, which is where a great many careers quietly begin. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
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Sources
- Sophie Wilson, English Wikipedia biography, filed under living people.
- Her own recollections of the BBC Micro week and of BBC BASIC, as quoted there.
- The Computer History Museum Fellow Award citation, 2012.
- The ARM architecture record, and its adoption figures as cited there.