The BBC Microcomputer was released to us in the UK in the late 1981. During is lifespan it was given the nick-name the ‘Beeb’ which was used mainly by its uses but it was easily recognizable by its small ‘Owl’ logo.

The Acorn Proton was a pre-existing project at Acorn to succeed the Atom home computer.  It was then submitted for, and won, the Literacy Project tender for a computer to accompany the TV programs and literature.  Renamed the BBC Micro, the platform was chosen by most schools and became a cornerstone of computing in British education in the 1980s, changing Acorn’s fortunes. It was also moderately successful as a home computer in the United Kingdom despite its high cost.  The machine was directly involved in the development of the ARM architecture which sees widespread use in embedded systems as of 2009.

The success of the machine in the UK was largely due to its acceptance as an “educational” computer – the vast majority of UK schools used BBC Micros to teach computer literacy and information technology skills.  I can remember using these machines at school in my class ‘computer studies’ creating short programs as the basic was quite easy to use.  I wonder if anyone remembers  the BBC’s version of  Ceefax/Teletext that was called Prestel lol.