The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, taught a generation how to use personal computers. Raspberry Pi exists partly because of that legacy. Our CEO and co-founder Eben Upton’s own journey began with a Beeb, and when he recently floated the idea of making a Raspberry Pi 500+ look like a BBC Micro, it felt less like a gimmick and more like a polite nod to four decades of British computing.



The BBC Micro was released in 1981. Manufactured by Acorn Computers, it had an 8-bit CPU running at 2MHz, and came in two main variants: the 16KB Model A, initially priced at £299, and the more popular 32KB Model B, priced at £399. According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, Model B would set you back something in the region of £1600 today. So, it was expensive to say the least. Despite this, it went on to sell over 1.5 million units, and was found in almost every UK school at the time. The BBC Micro’s entire memory could comfortably fit inside a modern emoji, but at the time it felt revolutionary, offering up a whole new world to the masses.



...read more at raspberrypi.com