ZX Spectrum 48K

The ZX80 opened the door for British home computing. The ZX81 blew the door off its hinges. The Spectrum nuked the door from orbit.

It is not hyperbole to call the ZX Spectrum legendary. Without it, the history of computing would be very different. The Spectrum’s success created a generation of young programmers, laying the foundations for the British computing industry. Many of today’s big-name developers started as a kid on a Spectrum in their bedroom. This influence bleeds beyond Britain – big names in computing such as ARM would probably never have existed without the Spectrum.

As was the Sinclair way, the Spectrum was designed to a price point and was significantly cheaper than its competitors such as the BBC Micro and even the Commodore 64. On paper, it was technically inferior to these machines, but Sinclair did an excellent job of mitigating any limitations and the Spectrum punched above its weight.

While the BBC Micro was dominant in schools, its pricing meant that only the wealthiest parents could afford to buy one at home. Inevitably, kids’ bedrooms were occupied with Spectrums as the best value option of the era. The Spectrum’s flexible and accessible implementation of the BASIC programming language encouraged kids to experiment and learn, despite the rubber keyboard. Teach a kid to code and what are they going to code? Hint: it's not going to be a word processor! Thus, the history of the Spectrum is replete with teenage coders who made millions with hit games.

Clive Sinclair famously had aspirations of “serious computing” for his products, and was never really happy about the Spectrum’s reputation as a games machine. Yet it was those teenage bedroom games developers who propelled the Spectrum and Sinclair to be the industry leaders, at least in the UK, and the shadow the machine casts over the history of computing is a very large one indeed.

That culture gave us classics like Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Elite, and launched the careers of developers who still shape games today. The Spectrum wasn't the most powerful machine of its day, and it didn't need to be. It was cheap, it was everywhere, and it taught a country to code games.