After attending the 1989 Exeter CALL Conference, David Shaw and John Partridge, two teachers from the University of Kent, recommended to the School of European and Modem Language Studies that the School should establish its own Computer Assisted Language Learning Laboratory. Several of us had been ‘keeping an eye’ on CALL for quite a few years, from the days when BBC micros were innovative marvels. The Applied Languages Board had acquired a BBC and some software and had gained some experience with it in postgraduate courses. David Shaw had been supervising practical programming projects for MSc students in Computing in the area of CALL and natural language processing. Our recommendation was that, with a new generation of microcomputers supplanting the trusty but limited BBC micro, a point had been reached where it would be realistic for the School to establish a CALL teaching laboratory on a more ambitious scale.