If you ever wondered how the Arduino came into being, check out [IEEE Spectrum’s] article entitled “The Making of Arduino.” From it’s humble origins in Northern Italy, the Arduino, as shown by a large number of projects featured at [HAD], has become the go-to processor for DIY processing power. It’s cost (around $30) and ease-of-use are some of the biggest factors allowing it to become such a huge success.

One thing that interests many people about the Arduino is that it is totally open source, licensed under the Creative Commons License.  This was quite innovative in itself since the CCL was generally applied to works of art like music and writing.  Despite the fact that [Banzi] and his team decided to literally give the design away, 0ver 250,000 of these boards have been sold worldwide not including their many clones.

If you’re wondering how it got the name “Arduino”, it’s named after a bar named “Bar Di Re Arduino” in the Northern Italian town of Ivrea.