ZX Spectrum

“Five million keys pressed, one rainbow, endless hours waiting for the tape to load.”

The ZX Spectrum was an 8-bit home computer designed by Sir Clive Sinclair and his small Cambridge team, built to be small, simple, and above all inexpensive. Manufactured in Dundee by Timex, it swapped its predecessor's black-and-white screen for colour — hence the name — and arrived in a Rick Dickinson-designed case with the famous rainbow motif and a rubber keyboard. Plugging into the family television and loading

First released in Britain on 23 April 1982, with launches in West Germany and the United States later that year, the Spectrum began life distributed by mail order before reaching wider channels. Its production run ended in the mid-1980s, a short life for a machine with an outsized legacy. For a generation of British fans, it remains the doorway through which home computing — and home-made games — first walked into th

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