‘Rasperry Pi’ and Video Game Expert Honoured by Queen

Video game pioneer David Braben has been appointed OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list regarding the work he has done for the UK's video game and computer industries. Known as one-half of the team that created the massively popular computer game ‘Elite’, Braben was partially responsible for the development of the sweetly named Raspberry Pi initiative.

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized single-board computer, developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, in order to supply schools with the means to teaching of basic computer science at a reasonable price. The device costs around £25, and enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to learn how to program. Raspberry Pi plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse, and is capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing high-definition video, to making spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing games. There have been more than 3 million Raspberry Pi’s sold to date.

Mr Braben aided in the set up of the Raspberry Pi Foundation that aimed to address the year-on-year decline in the numbers of A Level students applying to study Computer Science and ICT. The Raspberry Pi device became a popular alternative to expensive, and arguably arcane, computer systems in which schools had previously invested.

Mr Braben got his start in the computer game industry during the 1980s when the first home computers became available. He wrote the ‘Elite’ video game with friend Ian Bell, giving players the chance to pilot a spaceship around a galaxy, trading and fighting off pirates. In late 2012, Braben ran a campaign to raise funds to develop ‘Elite: Dangerous’, a modern-day update of the game. The campaign raised £1.5m and the game is due to be released later in 2014.

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