The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system.

Following the Literacy Project's call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the Proton, a successor to its Atom computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro, the platform was adopted by most schools and became a cornerstone of computing in British education in the 1980s, changing Acorn's fortunes. It was also moderately successful as a home computer in the United Kingdom despite its high cost. Acorn directly employed the machine to simulate and develop the ARM architecture which sees widespread use in embedded systems as of 2012.

While nine models were eventually produced with the BBC brand, the term "BBC Micro" is usually colloquially used to refer to the first six (Model A, B, B+64 and B+128, Master 128, Master Compact), with the subsequent models considered as part of the Archimedes series.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff. Its main responsibility is to provide impartial public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man.

The BBC is a semi-autonomous public service broadcaster that operates under a Royal Charter and a Licence and Agreement from the Home Secretary. Within the United Kingdom its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee, which is charged to all British households, companies and organisations using any type of equipment to record and/or receive live television broadcasts; the level of the fee is set annually by the British Government and agreed by Parliament.

Outside the UK, the BBC World Service has provided services by direct broadcasting and re-transmission contracts by sound radio since the inauguration of the BBC Empire Service in December 1932, and more recently by television and online. Though sharing some of the facilities of the domestic services, particularly for news and current affairs output, the World Service has a separate Managing Director, and its operating costs have historically been funded mainly by direct grants from the British government. These grants were determined independently of the domestic licence fee and were usually awarded from the budget of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As such, the BBC's international content has traditionally represented – at least in part – an effective foreign policy tool of the British Government. The recent BBC World Service spending review has announced plans for the funding for the world service to be drawn from the domestic licence fee.

Micro is a word that comes from the Greek μικρός (mikrós), meaning "small". It can be used to indicate a smaller than average scale, as opposed to prefixes mega and macro, which can be used to indicate a larger than average scale.

Micro may refer to:

All pages beginning with "Micro"