Sinclair QL

The QL, short for Quantum Leap, was Sinclair's bold attempt to vault beyond games and into serious computing. Launched in 1984 around a powerful processor and bundled with business software, it aimed at professionals and ambitious enthusiasts who wanted to do real work.

Its boldest, and most troublesome, feature was its storage: a pair of fiddly little tape-loop cartridges used in place of proper disks. Rushed to market before it was truly ready and dogged by reliability problems, the QL never won the audience Sinclair had imagined, and it remains a classic case of ambition outrunning execution.

It does, however, have one wonderful claim to fame. A young Finnish student named Linus Torvalds owned a QL and cut his teeth programming it, before going on to create Linux, the operating system that now runs much of the internet. Not bad for a machine the market never quite took to.