Tiny $35 Raspberry Pi computer causes big stir on launch day!
Its British-based designers at the Raspberry Pi Foundation hope the computer, which has been in the works for six years, will spark a new interest in programming among children.
"The primary goal was to build a low cost computer that every child could own, and one where programming was the natural thing to do with it," said co-founder Robert Mullins.
The computer's miniature opened circuit board is crowded with an Ethernet connection for the internet, two USB ports and an SD card port for memory and is powered by a standard USB mobile charger.
The low-cost computer does not include a monitor or keyboard.
The first version of the Raspberry Pi will ship soon to developers, and the hope is that they will design a software that will allow children to design their own computer programs.
The project came about when a group of Cambridge-based computer programmers noticed that fewer and less-qualified students were applying for computer science courses at Cambridge University.
"Each year we had fewer and fewer students applying, and most of them hadn't really done much more than write a web page," Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton told CNN. In the long term, he hopes the computer will generate an additional 1,000 engineers in the UK each year -- an "industry-changing development", according to Upton.
