I was doing some reading on Acorn Computers, a British company that was rival to Sinclair on the domestic home computers market back in 80-s, (see my post here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/micro-men-movie(2009)/)
, when I came across this:
"January 1999: CAMBRIDGE, England Acorn Computers Ltd. has changed its name to Element 14 Ltd."
I was like... what?! A home computer company that then developed the ARM processor is now Element 14, a largest electronic parts distributor ?
And then comes another shock:
"October 2000: Element 14, the bit of Acorn left after the veteran British company was dismembered for its ARM shareholding, has been bought by Broadcom"
![WTF? :wtf:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/wtf2.gif)
Broadcom owns Farnel/Newark Element 14 ?!
Took me a while to sort out... It turned out Farnell/Newark do not have to do with Element 14 of Acorn, the difference is in how the names are written: "Element 14" vs "element14" with the small first letter and no space in front of the 14. Acorn was using "Element 14" company name and Farnell/Newark was using "element14" brand in their names.
![Phew :phew:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/phew.gif)
It did not help with the confusion that both Acorn and Farnell were British companies.
![Grin ;D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
Curiously, in 2019 Farnell/Newark dropped the element14 element (no pun intended) from the companies names when were acquired by AVNet. As of today element14 seems to be an engineering community portal owned by AVNet. And Acorn's Element 14 name was abolished in 2000 after they joined Broadcom, becoming a DSL division of Broadcom.
![Phew :phew:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/phew.gif)