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In the early 1980s, the BBC started what became known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The project was initiated largely in response to an extremely influential BBC documentary The Mighty Micro, in which Dr. Christopher Evans from the UK National Physical Laboratory predicted the coming (micro)computer revolution and its impact on the economy, industry and lifestyle of the United Kingdom.
The BBC wanted to base its project on a microcomputer capable of performing various tasks which they could then demonstrate in their TV series The Computer Programme ( 1981). The list of topics included programming, graphics, sound and music, Teletext, controlling external hardware, artificial intelligence etc. It decided to badge a micro, then drew up a fairly ambitious (for its time) specification and asked for takers.
The BBC discussed the issue with Sir Clive Sinclair, who tried to peddle the unsuccessful Grundy NewBrainThe Grundy NewBrain was a microcomputer sold in the early- 1980s by Grundy Business Systems Ltd of Teddington and Cambridge, England. The NewBrain project was started in 1978 when Sinclair Radionics began design work with Mike Wakefield as the designer an micro to them, but it came nowhere near the specification the BBC had drawn up, and was rejected. The BBC made appointments to see several other British computer manufacturers, including Dragon and Acorn.
The Acorn team had been working on an upgrade to their existing AtomThe Acorn Atom was a home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd from 1981 to 1983 when it was replaced by the BBC Micro (originally Proton) and later the Acorn Electron . The Atom was a progression of the MOS Technology 6502-based machines that the company microcomputer. Known as the Proton it included better graphics and a faster 2MHz 6502The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced it was the least expensive full featured CPU on the market by far, at about 1/6th the price, or less, of competing designs from larger companies CPU. The machine was only in prototype form at the time, but the Acorn team, which relied largely on CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is the second-oldest academic institution in the English-speaking world (after Oxford). According to legend, the University was founded in 1209 by scholars escaping Oxford after a fight with locals. Cambridge and the University students (such as the legendary Roger Wilson and Steve FurberStephen Byram Furber is probably best known for his work at Acorn where he was one of the designers of the BBC Micro and the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor. He is the ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the Unive) worked through the night to get a working Proton together to show the BBC. The Acorn Proton was not only the only machine that came up to the BBC's specification, it also exceeded it in nearly every field. It was a clear winner.
It is rumoured that the BBC originally rejected the Proton, claiming that it did not portray the modern computer age correctly. Acorn countered this by submitting the Proton again, this time with the function keys painted a bright orange, and no other changes. It was accepted.
The machine was released as the BBC Microcomputer in early 1982. The machine was wildly popular in the UK; as with Sinclair's ZX Spectrum, also released around that time, demand greatly exceeded supply and for some months there were long delays before customers received the machines they had ordered. A brief attempt to market the machine in the United States failed, due largely to the dominance of the Apple II family. 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. Research Machines had, until this time, been one of the leaders in UK educational computer market. The BBC Micro was also a far more reliable and durable machine than Sinclair's ZX Spectrum, being able to cope with all the abuse that schoolchildren could throw at it.
The "Beeb", as it soon became known by its users, initially came in two models; the Model A at £235, and the Model B at £335. Acorn anticipated the total sales to be around 12,000 units, but eventually more than 1 million BBC Micros were sold.
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