The BBC Microcomputer is a range of computers designed and built by Acorn Computers during the 1980s and 1990s. It was originally designed to support the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project and was also widely used in British primary and secondary schools, as well as being a popular home computer. It is the first computer many Britons growing up in the 1980s saw and used and it has been the starting point of many thousands of careers in software, computing, electronics and other technical fields.

The range was initially based on an 8-bit microprocessor: the MOS Technology 6502. Later computers were the first to use the 32-bit ARM — a microprocessor developed by Acorn and the origin of what is now the most widely used processor architecture in the world.

This site focuses on the 8-bit range of BBC Microcomputers. These machines are easily identifiable by their black keyboards with a distinctive row of red/orange function keys across the top.