It’s hard to believe, but the home computer that started a revolution (in the UK at least) is now 25 years old. The Sinclair Spectum, the successor to the ZX80 and ZX81 was the most popular home computer of it’s era - 1982-186 and only went out of fashion due to Sir Clive selling his technology to Alan Sugar, he of Amstrad fame. Of course, the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST also killed off the spectrum, thanks to their 16-bit processors, but there’s no denying just how much the Spectrum and it’s 8-bit Zilog chip changed the world. The BBC have put together a pretty sweet article taking a look at the life, death and afterlife of the Speccy:

It’s difficult to estimate how many Spectrums were sold around the world, for several reasons. First, the official machines were available in no less than seven distinct versions, from 1982’s 16K original to 1988’s Spectrum +3, with 128K of RAM and a built in floppy disk drive. Second, there were various semi-official Spectrum-type computers released in the US and other overseas territories by Timex, the manufacturers of the official Spectrum. And third, the machine’s simplicity meant that pirate copies of it were common. Indeed, cheap Spectrum copies are still in production in Eastern Europe at the time of writing. Undoubtedly, however, the Spectrum sold millions of units throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s.

The machine came in two models - £125 for a 16KB machine and £175 for a 48KB machine, making it one of the first affordable machines. For many people in the UK the Spectrum was their first experience of using a computer and it quickly gained a loyal following. At the time it was competing against the BBC Micro, which had been released the year earlier and was popular in schools, but was priced starting at £235. Other machines from rival firms in the UK followed, among them the Jupiter Ace, Dragon 32 and Oric Atmos.

Rick Dickinson, who was responsible for the look and shape of the machine, said the company had no idea it would make such an impact. “We started selling kit computers to hobbyists and thought we would sell 1,000 machines a month. “We went on to sell 200,000 a month and ran into supply problems.”

He said cost was the driving factor behind the design. Many of today’s video game luminaries cut their teeth on Sinclair computers, among them Dave Perry, who runs Shiny Entertainment, and Tim and Chris Stamper, who founded Rare. In 1967 Sir Cive Sinclair pioneered the miniature TV “Sir Clive Sinclair gave so many British people an incredible step up into the videogame industry, which in a few more years will be bigger than the music industry,” said Mr Perry, who began writing games as a school child on the ZX81 and became a professional programmer thanks to the Spectrum.

“Clive is a national hero,” said Mr Dickinson. “He loved looking for technology ideas and often had an idea and had to wait for the technology to catch up.

Here’s some screens of the most popular games on the Spectrum:

Aaaah, the good old days of blinking load screens, Ferguson tape decks, dodgy tapes, pirating games at school and programming in Sinclair Basic…. Life was simple in those days!