A history of ARM, part 1: Building the first chip | Ars Technica

Great first part of the story behind the creation of the ARM chip. It Is amazing how much of this is done in emulators (the ARM emulator was in BASIC!), and also how small the team was.

These amazing results spurred the small team to finish the job. The design for the first ARM CPU was sent to be fabricated at VLSI Technology Inc., an American semiconductor manufacturing firm. The first version of the chip came back to Acorn on April 26, 1985. Wilson plugged it into the Tube slot on the BBC Micro, loaded up the ported-to-ARM version of BBC BASIC, and tested it with a special PRINT command. The chip replied, “Hello World, I am ARM,” and the team cracked open a bottle of champagne.

If this type of story is at all interesting to you would strongly recommend reading Kidder's "The Should of a New Machine" which tells the history of Data General.