Tatung Einstein

The Tatung Einstein was a British-built machine launched in 1984 with its sights set a little higher than the typical games-led home micro. Most strikingly, it came with a built-in disk drive at a time when nearly everything else still relied on the slow shuffle of cassette tape.

That made it a favourite tool of software developers, who used the Einstein as a workbench for creating games destined for other machines of the same family. It occupied an interesting middle ground between the home and small-business worlds, more capable and more serious than its price might suggest.

It never became a household name, and it was never really meant to. But among the people who actually used it, the Einstein earned solid respect as a sturdy, well-thought-out machine. It is one of those quiet British computers that did important work behind the scenes, even if the public never noticed.