History of BBC Micro
The BBC began what became known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project in the early 1980s. The idea was inspired in part by Christopher Evans of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, who prophesied the coming microcomputer revolution and its impact on the UK economy, industry and way of life in an ITV documentary series called The Mighty Micro. The BBC sought to build a microcomputer that could perform a variety of tasks, which they could then demonstrate on the television show The Computer Programme. Graphics programming, sound and music, teletext, manipulation of external hardware and artificial intelligence were among the topics covered. He created a detailed specification for a BBC computer and met with a number of companies, including Acorn Computers, Sinclair Research, Newbury Laboratories and Tangerine Computer Systems, to explore the idea.
Data from the Dragon The BBC was castigated for promoting a specific commercial product and for going beyond the ‘traditional BBC model’ of promoting existing information networks of education and training providers, with the BBC being criticised for promoting a specific commercial product and for going beyond the ‘traditional BBC model’ of promoting existing information networks of education and training providers. The Department of Business was also accused of making the BBC ‘an arm of the government’s industrial strategy’ and using the Computer Literacy Project to ‘fund the industry through the back door’, masking public funding on behalf of a government that was supposedly opposed to subsidising the industry. The BBC’s involvement in microcomputing sparked tentative plans by the independent television companies of the ITV network to launch their own initiative and a competing computer system, with a CP/M-based system proposed by Transam Computers being considered for such an initiative at a meeting in late 1983 by the Independent Television Companies Association. The designed system would have cost £399, the same as the BBC Model B, and would have contained 64KB of RAM, a disk interface, and serial and parallel interfaces, as well as being a “low-cost evolution” of an existing machine, the Transam Tuscan, which cost £1,700 and included two floppy disk drives.
The ITV companies voted no on this proposal, citing a potential breach of the companies’ obligations under the broadcasting standards prohibiting sponsorship, as well as concerns about a conflict of interest with advertising for computer products. Despite Prism Microproducts’ denials about involvement with ITV, the company was already working on a joint venture with Transam on a device that was said to be under consideration by the broadcasting organisation. This device, a business system that became known as the Wren, was apparently marketed as an ‘ITV Micro’ around late 1983, with a residential version having ORACLE teletext reception capabilities. However, not all ITV franchisees were as enthusiastic as others in airing microcomputer-related programming or pursuing a computer retail strategy. The Acorn team had been working on a successor to their Atom microcomputer for some time. It was nicknamed the Proton, and featured improved graphics and a 2 MHz MOS Technology 6502 central processor. The machine was only in the design stage at the time, and the Acorn team, which included Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson, had just a week to turn sketches into a functional prototype.
