An old friend turned 30 years old today, and while he has no home anymore, he carries within some of my early computing memories.
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with its 48 kb RAM, 16 colors, 256 x 192 pixel display and monophonic sound, was officially launched on April 23, 1982.
A couple of friends bought one during that time, and mine was acquired on Christmas eve of 1985. The 8-bit ZX Spectrum sported a “chicklet” keyboard and an expansion port. One had to connect it to a television as a display, and software loaded from audio tape; a tape recorder was not included.
And yet, somehow, through that early introduction to BASIC – the primary programming language of the ZX Spectrum – a generation of youth around the world, experienced their first steps on an affordable computer.
It wasn’t all about programming and education; computer games were the driving force and soon enough, software houses in the UK, Europe and in the Americas churned out software coded in Zilog Z80 “machine code“. The Zilog CPU was clocked at 3.5 Mhz, a tiny nano-midget compared to today’s Intel monster CPU clocks of 1,000 times more.
“Uncle” Clive Sinclair, the progressive British entrepreneur behind Sinclair Research, was knighted eventually by Queen Elizabeth of England. His contribution to spreading affordable computing to thousands turned him into a legend; thousands of kids, teenagers and adults alike aspired to become programmers and entrepreneurs.
Having produced a published series of software games and applications in the late 80’s and very early 90’s, I’m grateful that ZX Spectrum ever existed, as it carved a path for me, my career and that of thousands of others – back in the day that the Internet was pure science fiction.
I started out with a ZX81, then a Spectrum. I still have my Spectrum and it still works 🙂