Editing Sophie Wilson (section)

=== BBC micro ===
Wilson was at the forefront of creating the prototype that enabled Acorn to win the contract with the [[BBC|British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)]] for their ambitious computer education project.{{sfn|Gelenbe|2009|p=119}}  

The BBC had planned that the centrepiece of their project would be an [[The Computer Programme|upcoming tv series]] that would relate the possibilities that computers were opening up to demonstrations shown running on a standard reference microcomputer, that viewers would then be able to experiment with themselves.  However by the end of 1980 it had become clear that the BBC's intended machine, the government-backed [[Grundy Newbrain|Newbury Newbrain]], would not be able to meet either the capability or the timetable the BBC sought, and the programme team began an urgent search for other options.  Curry pressed the already existing Acorn Atom, but when this was rejected at the start of February 1981 as being too limited and too non-standard, Curry instead offered for the BBC to come to Cambridge the following week to view a prototype of Acorn's next computer — a machine that in reality did not as yet exist, beyond some general design discussion and a name, the Acorn Proton.  Hauser employed a deception, telling both Wilson and colleague Steve Furber that the other had agreed a prototype could be built within a week.<ref name=revolution2008>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7307636.stm|title=BBC Micro ignites memories of revolution|publisher=BBC News|date=21 March 2008|access-date=26 October 2015|archive-date=7 April 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080407140141/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7307636.stm|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTNrseS4DeE A week to remember: race to the BBC Micro prototype], [[The National Museum of Computing]], 14 January 2022. via [[YouTube]].</ref> Taking up the challenge, the Acorn team designed the system including the circuit board and components from Monday to Wednesday, which required fast new [[Dynamic random-access memory|DRAM]] [[integrated circuit]]s to be sourced directly from [[Hitachi]]. By Thursday evening, a prototype had been built, but it was only on Friday morning that it was actually working, allowing Wilson (who had managed to catch a few hours sleep in the night) to start porting over an operating system,<ref name=revolution2008 /> in time to be able to show it consistently drawing a line to a high-res graphics screen by the time the BBC arrived, with full text and graphics on screen by the time the BBC returned from an unproductive visit to the nearby [[Sinclair Research]]. 

The Proton was accepted to become the [[BBC Micro]],<ref>[https://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/agenda.html Meeting agenda], 12 February 1981.  Agenda for the meeting at which the decision was taken. Made available by [[Richard T. Russell|Richard Russell]], 2016.</ref> with it falling to Wilson to develop its operating system and its version of BASIC, [[BBC BASIC]]<ref name="Electronics1">{{cite web |title=ARM's way |url=https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/archived/resources-archived/arms-way-1998-04/ |website=Electronics Weekly |date=29 April 1998 |access-date=13 December 2023}}</ref> — at 16K and 16K respectively a fourfold increase on the 4K and 4K of the Atom, including a full set of [[floating point]] mathematical routines. Wilson's "Acorn SuperBASIC" development had reached about 10K by the time of the BBC's visit, and she was keen to preserve the improvements she considered she had made with [[Acorn System BASIC]] over previous versions of the language.<ref>[https://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/beebspec.html BBC outline specification for tenders] and [https://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/proposal.html Acorn initial response], December 1980/January 1981. Made available by [[Richard T. Russell|Richard Russell]], 2016. Accessed 2024-02-06. See also [https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11935 discussion thread]</ref> But the BBC, in particular their external consultant [[John Coll]] and BBC Engineering's [[Richard T. Russell|Richard Russell]], were adamant that the core established features of the language needed to be present with recognisably standard syntax. On the other hand extensions that Wilson had written to allow more [[structured programming]] in BASIC chimed closely with the BBC team's ambitions, and [[Naming_convention_(programming)#Length_of_identifiers|long fully-significant variable name]]s, [[Repeat until loop|repeat/until loops]], and multi-line [[Procedure (computer science)|procedure]]s and [[Function (computer programming)|function]]s with variables that could be [[Local variable|declared local]] all became hallmarks of BBC BASIC.  Work on the system design, operating system, and BASIC language (and fitting everything into the memory available) continued through the summer, and Wilson recalled watching the [[wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer]] in July 1981 on a small portable television while attempting to debug and re-solder the prototype.<ref name=revolution2008 />   Along with Furber, Wilson was present backstage at the machine's first studio recordings for television, in case any software fixes were required. She later described the event as "a unique moment in time when the public wanted to know how this stuff works and could be shown and taught how to program."<ref name=revolution2008 />