BBC Micro
More info
- Creator
- Acorn Computers
- Released
- 1981
- Type
- Home and school computer
- CPU
- MOS 6502, 2 MHz
- Successor
- Acorn Archimedes (the first ARM computer)
The school computer the BBC commissioned to teach Britain to program — whose successor became the processor in your phone.
In the early 1980s the BBC ran a public education project about computers and needed a machine to build the programmes around. Acorn of Cambridge won the contract with a sturdy 6502 computer with an unusually well-designed BASIC, a built-in assembler and a wealth of expansion ports. It became standard in British schools, often linked together by Acorn's own Econet network.
Its historical weight lies in what came next. When Acorn set out to build a successor, the team found the available 16-bit processors too awkward and designed their own: the Acorn RISC Machine, later just ARM. That architecture now sits in practically every mobile phone in the world.