![]() ![]() To do anything with the machine, you had to learn some basic text commands. Notably, the Micro booted directly in BBC BASIC (beginners all-purpose symbolic instruction code), a simple programming language. The vast majority of UK schools would soon be stocked with the machine, which sold more than 1.5 million units in its lifetime. More important than its specs, though, was how the Micro's television show and its ubiquity in education would introduce computers to an entire generation. "I was shortly to acquire a ZX81, but comparing the ZX81 and the BBC Micro was like chalk and cheese." The BBC Micro was a familiar sight in classrooms across the UK. "It was an awesome machine, because it was like a Rolls Royce compared to anything else out there," X-COM creator and early Micro developer Julian Gollop tells me. Based on an 8-bit 6502 processor clocked at 2MHz (the same as in the Apple II), either 16kB or 32kB of RAM, and featuring a high-res graphics mode, it was a powerful computer for the time-on paper at least-more so than its competitor, Sinclair's ZX81. After showing the BBC its prototype-famously created in just one week-it was awarded the contract to produce the machine. This caught the attention of Sinclair and Curry, who knew full well what having a trusted name like the BBC adorning their computers would do for sales.Īcorn, staffed by Cambridge University's finest, was quick to move on the idea. To keep the programme simple, the broadcaster wanted a single computer to base the show on. In short, 1981 saw the BBC announce its Computer Literacy Project, which aimed to latch onto the growing trend in personal computers and create a TV programme to teach the public how to use them. The story of how collaboration between one of the most respected public broadcasters in the world and a small computer outfit from Cambridge took place is a sprawling tale of British ingenuity and questionable business practices, one that's humorously (if not entirely accurately) told in the BBC comedy drama Micro Men. The 1MHz Commodore PET would be the first to market, but it was eccentric inventor Clive Sinclair's Sinclair Research, former Sinclair employee Chris Curry's Acorn Computers, and the broadcasting might of the BBC that would come to define UK computing in the early '80s. By the time the Apple II made its European debut in late '79 with the Apple II Europlus, the UK was already churning out machines of its own. Even then, importing the machine from the US was an expensive proposition. Its graphics system, designed specifically for NTSC monitors, wouldn't work properly in the UK without modification. Revolutionary games like Mystery House, Ultima, and Castle Wolfenstein made their debut on the Apple II, and-thanks to its decade-long life span-the machine would play host to a multitude of genre-defining releases.īut for those in the UK, owning an Apple II was something of a pipe dream. Alongside the likes of the Atari 2600, it was also shaping the nascent video games market. The Apple II, released in 1977, was dominating the home computer market in the US, turning a once small operation run out of a garage in Cupertino into a multibillion-dollar company. ![]() The personal computer market, once famously dismissed by 70s computing powerhouse Ken Olsen with the immortal words "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," was rapidly expanding. ![]()
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