The history of the Micro:bit

It is important to know the history of the BBC Micro:bit. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the United Kingdom’s public broadcaster. It is also the world’s oldest and biggest broadcaster. BBC has always been pioneering in creating programs for outreach in science and technology to improve the public understanding of science. Its programs include various documentaries and television series.

One such interesting television series was The Computer Programme. It was broadcast on BBC Two and used a home computer, the BBC Micro, conceptualized by the BBC and developed by Acorn Computers. The TV series was a part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The BBC Micro had six different models, which were all based on the famous MOS Technology 6502 8-bit microprocessor. It is a simplified and faster version of the Motorola 6800 microprocessor. The 6502 is a very popular microprocessor, and variants of it were used in popular video game consoles and computers such as Atari 2600, Apple II, Nintendo Entertainment System (popularly known as NES or Famicom), Commodore 64, and, of course, the BBC Micro. The BBC Micro was very successful, and it made a great impact in the computer education sector, leaving a great legacy behind.

In 2012, with the release of Raspberry Pi, a new era was ushered into the world of computing and education. Through the Computer Literacy Project, the BBC sought to build upon the legacy of the BBC Micro after the great success of Raspberry Pi. It onboarded many partners from industry, such as Microsoft, and academia, such as Lancaster University. The first version (now referred to as the Micro:bit V1) was launched in July 2015 and was available for general sale in March 2016. The BBC also gave hundreds of thousands of Micro:bits to school children in the UK as a part of science education outreach. After the Micro:bit successfully launched, the BBC formed a not-for-profit organization known as the Microbit Foundation.

Note

For more details, you can visit the home page of the Microbit Foundation at https://microbit.org/.

In October 2020, the Microbit Foundation released the second version of the Micro:bit. V2 has got better specifications than V1 at the same price. We will explore the specifications of V1 and V2 side by side in the following section.