Spectrum Made Me
Today is the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Its story has been told many times. This cheap, flexible machine from British entrepreneur and inventor Sir Clive Sinclair flooded UK homes, nursed a computer-literate generation and kick-started Britain’s astonishingly dense and prolific cottage industry in computer games – an industry whose fading after-image can still be seen today in studios like Codemasters, Rare and Sumo Digital. But that’s not the story I want to tell. I still have my 48K Spectrum. There it is on the right. It’s scratched and battered but, last time I plugged it in (I had to use one of those ridged, grey power supplies from the later Amstrad era, much to my distaste), it still worked. I’ve kept hold of some game tapes for it too, not that I could get any of them to load. Read more…
