His invention helped to temporarily place the rescuing of Miner Willy from his 20 level surreal subterranean Hell atop Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – just above the inherent basic human need for a SodaStream. Thankfully, it did not provide the ability.Ĭlive Sinclair was knighted in 1983 for his contributions to the British Home Computer Industry, and for turning approximately 75% of the nation into socially acceptable nerds. The ZX Spectrum gave everyone, including the sardonic domino wielding Scots, the impression that they could rain weapons of mass destruction on an innocent planet a la War Games. In fact, pre the home computing revolution, the average Scottish family would sit by flickering candlelight brusquely slamming dominoes onto a rough-hewn table while bagpipe music looped infinitely. Prior to 1982 home computing consisted of drawing crude buttons in black Biro on a shoe-box, and making beeping noises while waving a torch randomly at your television screen. In the early 80’s it was not unheard of for the whole family to gather ritualistically around the Spectrum in their lounge, holding hands and chanting along with the squealing chaotic tape loading noise until a chunky pixilated character manifested itself on the couch. Post the ZX81, with it’s monochromatic output and 1k of memory (unless you bought the space age hyper-brick of a RAM pack and upgraded to 16k), the ZX Spectrum boasted an impossibly vast memory threshold of 48k, which made it a veritable leviathan by comparison. It’s unassuming rubber keyed facade opened a portal to an improbable universe of wonder, delight and amazement.
Unleashed on the general public in April 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd, a company founded by the wacky professorial looking Sir Clive Sinclair, the ZX Spectrum quickly became an 8-bit diminutive magical black box that held pride of place in most UK households. Now that the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega is on the market, and a cornucopia of gen-Xer adults are in a nostalgic zeitgeist inspired frenzy to buy it for ‘their kids’, my mind has turned to reminiscing about the halcyon days of the ZX Spectrum.
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