The
BBC Microcomputer System, or
BBC Micro, was a series of
microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by the
Acorn Computer company for the
BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the
British Broadcasting Corporation. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its
operating system.
After the Literacy Project's
call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the
Proton, a successor of its
Atom
computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro, the system
was adopted by most schools in the United Kingdom, changing Acorn's
fortunes. It was also moderately successful as a
home computer in the UK despite its high cost. Acorn also employed the machine to simulate and develop the
ARM architecture which is much used for
embedded systems. Globally, as of 2013, ARM is the most widely used
32-bit instruction set architecture in terms of quantity produced.
While nine models were eventually produced with the BBC brand, the
term "BBC Micro" is usually used colloquially to refer to the first six
(Model A, B, B+64, B+128, Master 128, and Master Compact), with the
subsequent models considered as part of Acorn's
Archimedes series.
