BBC Basic: the people’s language

It was one of the most important breakthroughs in British computing history, the cornerstone of computing education for more than a decade and it’s 25 years old on 1 August, but BBC Basic remains in active service to this day. The computing language that was devised for a television show became more famous than anyone ever expected, being used to write anything from complex accountancy software to the graphics for TV programmes. From the classroom to the corner shop, BBC Basic has had an enormous impact on computing history, and it’s got one hell of a story to tell.

Nowadays, auditioning for a TV show means making a fool of yourself in front of Simon Cowell. Back in the early 1980s, it involved building a computer that ran on a language viewers could comprehend. “Around 1980, someone at the BBC thought it would be a good idea to teach people about computer programming. There were plenty of home computers around, but there wasn’t a great deal of compatibility between them. This was a major problem for the BBC when putting together a series of programmes,” says Richard Russell, then a technician at the BBC.

Most of those early home computers were already running versions of Basic, the most popular being Microsoft Basic. “The thinking was that we would accept Microsoft Basic,” says Russell, who was on the team detailed to pick the right computer for the Beeb. “But the BBC brought in a technical advisor, who said we needed something better. The Basics around just weren’t up to it.”

So the BBC made a truly momentous decision: instead of waiting for something better to come along via the traditional channels of product development, it would create its own computer and version of Basic specifically for the television series. With hindsight, it seems an almost ludicrous proposition, like building a car to teach people how to drive for a series of Top Gear. But with home computing in its infancy and less scrutiny of the BBC than there is today, the Corporation ploughed ahead with its radical plan. “I couldn’t see it happening now. There would be so much fuss about it being unfair to licence-fee payers and other companies,” admits Russell.

Build your own PC

The BBC didn’t have the know-how or resources to build the computer itself, so it invited a number of British companies to tender for the job. Among those who pitched were Sir Clive Sinclair – who later achieved enormous success with the ZX Spectrum, but whose bizarrely titled Grundy NewBrain computer failed to meet the BBC’s requirements – and Dragon.

One company that wasn’t originally considered by the BBC was Acorn, despite already achieving notable success with its Atom computer. However, one of Acorn’s employees heard of the BBC’s project and told the corporation of its plans to develop a successor to the Atom, codenamed the Proton. The only problem was the computer didn’t actually exist. “The crunch moment came when the BBC said ‘prove more about these plans’,” says Sophie Wilson, who was then a programmer with Acorn.

Acorn’s co-founder, Herman Hauser, phoned both Wilson and her colleague Steve Furber on Sunday evening and asked them whether it was possible to build a prototype of the Proton to show the BBC by the following Friday. Both told him it was out of the question. Hauser resorted to amateur psychology: he phoned Wilson back and told her that Furber said it was doable, and vice versa. Safe in the knowledge that the pair’s competitive streak would drive them forward, Wilson and Furber worked day and night to successfully meet the Friday deadline. “It was a tortuous time,” says Wilson. “But, in retrospect, Herman was right to get a prototype and we were able to build a very sophisticated machine.”
Indeed, the Beeb was impressed by the Proton: with its 2MHz processor, 32KB of ROM (16KB of which was devoted to the Basic interpreter), full keyboard with ten function keys, and graphics system capable of displaying eight colours, it had easily surpassed the BBC’s requirements. However, the BBC did have misgivings about the version of Basic that Wilson had written for it. “It was the biggest bone of contention,” says Wilson. “We’d already gone to a lot of trouble to provide a structured programming ability. But the BBC was reasonably sensible – if it was going to teach people a language, it wanted it with [easy-to-understand] labels [such as ‘loop’ and ‘repeat until’].”

After much negotiation, Wilson agreed to revise her version of Basic to meet the BBC’s requirements, while the function keys on the Proton were painted bright orange to give it a modern home computer feel. Acorn had sealed the deal. The Proton was renamed the BBC Micro and Wilson’s Basic became known as BBC Basic.

Low expectations

The first episode of The Computer Programme was broadcast on 11 January 1982, but despite the enormous lengths the BBC had gone to with commissioning its own computer, expectations were modest at best. “It originally forecast that the BBC Micro would sell 20,000. Steve [Furber] and I thought it was insane – we thought it would sell 50,000,” says Wilson. “It ended up selling a million.”

Demand for the £235 Model A BBC Micro far outstripped supply and thousands of customers suffered long delays before they could get their hands on the device and start programming. Yet, while the television series brought the BBC Micro into the public gaze, the ultimate reason for its success was its adoption in schools. During the 1980s, BBC Micros became a permanent fixture in classrooms, as schools scrambled to teach children computer literacy. For many of today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings, the BBC Micro was their first exposure to a computer. Indeed, I vividly remember playing a maths game on a BBC Micro at my junior school in the mid-1980s and, in a testament to its longevity, typing up a journalism assignment on one at university more than a decade later.

So why were BBC Basic and the Micro such a roaring success? “It was able to cover the whole range of abilities of programming. It was simple enough for someone who’s never touched a computer in their life to start programming, but it’s also extremely powerful. There’s virtually nothing you can’t write in BBC Basic,” says Russell.

“BBC Basic was kind of magical,” adds Wilson. “It wasn’t unreliable, it was worthwhile using and it was fast. Fundamentally, it’s a very capable language.”

The Micro’s popularity was also testament to Wilson’s abilities as a programmer, squeezing every last bit of power out of its limited hardware. In those days, the computer’s operating system was stored in just 16KB of ROM (around half the size of the Word document used to type this article), and there was no opportunity to fix bugs with patches. “I spent many months rewriting the Basic interpreter to fit into some 16KB of memory. That was very arduous. Memory was fantastically expensive in those days. The real important date [in the build of the computer] was sending things off for ROM-ing,” says Wilson.

Despite the BBC Micro’s enormous success in the UK and certain regions of Europe, it failed to gain a foothold in the US market. And as the IBM PC began to gather momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s, schools replaced their ageing BBCs with Windows-based machines. It wasn’t only the Micros that were thrown out when Windows came along – the mentality that anyone could program a computer was lost too. “Schools actually taught programming and would use BBC Basic. The idea of programming wasn’t alien in those days. Today, attitudes are completely different. People assume they can’t program a computer,” argues Russell.
25 years on

But although many people haven’t used it since the 1980s, BBC Basic didn’t die with the Micro. Russell used his extensive knowledge of the BBC project and the processors of the time to create an IBM PC version of BBC Basic in 1986. And many years later, in 2001, he completed an 18-month project to code BBC Basic for Windows. “People come to me and say ‘if only we knew this existed earlier’. Sadly, there’s no large organisation to spread the word any more.”

Nevertheless, BBC Basic still has a loyal band of devotees: it’s still in active service in applications as diverse as storyboarding for a children’s cartoon called Hana’s Helpline to controlling power generators for helicopters made by Cambridge Dynamics Ltd. According to Wilson, it was even used to create the original systems behind Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.

Darren Windsor uses BBC Basic to code his SimplEPOS software for shop tills in more than 150 retail outlets across the UK. Windsor first came across BBC Basic when he was at school, and nearly 20 years later he’s still coding away. “BBC Basic will quite happily run on anything. It’s also quite robust – I’ve never had any reliability problems,” he says.

Windsor says the interface on his software is kept deliberately simple, but despite this “you don’t think to look at it that it’s written in BBC Basic. The language has come a long way since back then [in the 1980s].” The only problem with BBC Basic is that you have to do all the programming work yourself. “Sometimes it would be nice to buy objects off the shelf – like a graphical form from another designer. With Visual Basic, you can drag and drop buttons on to forms, for example,” he says.

So why hasn’t Windsor taken the plunge and dumped BBC Basic for a more modern language like Visual Basic or C++?

“With some of them, there’s such a big learning curve that it’s quite hard work. BBC Basic is a very easy language to work with.”

The fact that, 25 years on, some people still prefer to work with BBC Basic than vastly more powerful languages provides total vindication of the BBC’s original decision to keep things as simple as possible. Never before had anyone decided to teach the general public how to program a computer and, given their now bewildering complexity, it seems unlikely anyone will ever do so again.

BBC basic now

Are your fingertips itching to relive those nostalgia-filled days of BBC Basic programming? Richard Russell’s BBC Basic for Windows can be used to write anything from small utilities to full-blown Windows applications.

Things have moved on since Sophie Wilson spent months cramming the code into just 16KB. There’s now 256MB allocated for users’ programs, and you can create standalone executable (EXE) files that run on any Windows computer and typically have a footprint of less than 100KB.

There are a few sample programs on Richard Russell’s website to show you what BBC Basic is capable of, including a simple media player and a Sudoku game. You can download the full software for £30 inc VAT from www.rtrussell.co.uk or have a go with the trial version on our cover disc.