HeadFirst Public Domain was a library of

public domain software Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, ...

for the

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

and

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 ...

8-bit computers. It also offered several discs of software for the

Acorn Archimedes Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and the proprietary operating systems Arthur and RISC OS. The first mode ...

History

It was set up in December 1992 by two friends, Gareth Boden and James Treadwell. Gareth Boden seems to have done the majority of the programming. The friends were just leaving school at the time. It was a bedroom enterprise and HeadFirst PD produced paper catalogues of its products. The catalogues invited people to buy discs full of

from HeadFirst PD for £1.25 per disc. There are relatively few demos on the Acorn Electron and HeadFirst PD was unusual in that it released the majority of its software for the Acorn Electron, not the more-popular BBC Micro. Indeed, several of the better HeadFirst PD demos were Electron-only. The ''Invader Demo'' and the ''Vortex Demo'' were prime examples. There are several different 'versions' of some HeadFirst PD discs, as the demos were sometimes revisited and slightly improved. The early versions of the discs were superseded. The early HeadFirst PD catalogues, for example, typically had one demo per disc. By the latest catalogue, seven or eight demos – although not all were programmed by the two authors – were typically on a menu-driven disc. Not all games on HeadFirst PD discs were in fact programmed by HeadFirst PD. Many other public domain groups were going strong at the time, and each library 'borrowed' programs from the other. Some titles on HeadFirst PD discs also appear on BBC PD discs and Mad Rabbit PD discs. HeadFirst PD was closed down in 1995. The two friends were contributors to the Electron User Group magazine and the launch and demise of the library is documented in full between issues #7 and #23. The whole library of HeadFirst PD discs was 'lost' in 1995 when the library stopped supplying discs. In 2008, the library was re-discovered by Gareth Boden and was made available on the Acorn Electron World web site. The best known demos from HeadFirst PD remain the ''Invaders Demo'' and the ''Vortex Demo''. ''Invaders'' shows a scrolling parallax stars backdrop with a simple space invaders game coupled with scrolling message. ''Vortex'' shows a spiral with interrupt-driven music and colour switching. HeadFirst PD also produced several games, and 'data-packs' to such popular professional titles of the day such as White Magic and Repton Infinity. In fact, their extension 'data-packs' are the only surviving fan-based extensions to these popular Electron games. HeadFirst PD also produced a spin-off library of images for use with the Stop Press 64 desktop publishing program.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Headfirst Pd

Electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no ...

Public-domain software