Rick Dickinson, the Sinclair designer guy, was simply a genius. It helped a lot for the success, the ZX81 and the Spectrum being just beautiful objects.
On a side note, I think one of the most iconic manual cover for a computer is the ZX81 one. Designed by John Harris, it's a masterpiece. I think he designed the Spectrum manual too but it was not so great.
We had beautiful computers at the time. I would say, in order of appearance, the Atari VCS, the ZX81, the Spectrum, the Commodore C128 and the Amiga 500 (inspired by the C128), the Apple IIc Plus. The original Macintosh eventually. It was just like having a piece of art at home.
The Spectrum Next, still designed by Rick, is beautiful too.
My memory on the Sinclairs is their keyboards too, horrible, that was the reason I didn't take them serious as a kid (they felt like a Fisher toy), used a ViC20 in a department store to learn coding and then bought an Amstrad CPC - mostly because of the 80 character screen vs. the C64.
Laser focus to the main topic, I remember that the Sinclair appeal in Latin America was the price and that low barrier to entry enables much more success, like top Spanish magazines focused on the Sinclairs and the Commodores. It is important to memorialize that even if your family can afford a more expensive device most conscious parents found that these were expensive game devices more than a computer. Even programming was about being fun, not an industry! The first one I saw was a father who was an accountant and complemented its kids fun with calculations he should do, so the father learnt how to develop software in the same way, kind of, you learn how to program an HP-15C calculator [0]. I knew several accountants at that time that followed that route before even using VisiCalc.
Thank you for highlighting Rick Dickinson [1], it's probable very difficult to communicate to newer generations how form factor or plain aesthetics played in the 80s where a desktop PC is just a box. This clearly include calculators like the HPs ones. For the ones with sensitive clear memories, touching and using this devices make an echo in your spirit. Even when you think that the ZX81 had a membrane keyboard, there was something "mystic" about finding devices with such different design. We might even use the "kinky" term for devices like the Casio CZ-101 [2].
It's interesting how one generation basically had the same experience at the same time, but how it varied from place to place.
The UK was very into ZX - first the ZX80 and ZX81, and then the Spectrum. For that generation, in the UK, Spectrum is the start of everything.
I was an Apple child myself (a function of the machine my dad brought home), a BBC Micro at school (because... education), but in the mid 80s the Apple switched to IBM, and I've been on the PC track ever since.
I've met other groups for whom Vic 20, Commodore 64 and especially Amiga hold that first-love status. I'm just blessed to be that generation where the hardware was there at the right time.
It's crazy how fast things moved back then. Home computing went from Spectrum/C64 to Amiga/Atari ST in a few short years, and the advance was gigantic. Nowadays, I lament that my 2012 PC will lose support when Windows 10 reaches end of life next year - there's not anything especially different or exciting in this year's PC. Yes, it's faster for some use cases, but for 90% stuff it's the same thing.
In my friend group - those with a Commodore 64 were at the top. The Vic-20 was the middle and the Sinclair the bottom. My one friend with a Tandy Color Computer had no idea what he was doing, his family just had money.
But yes they were everywhere when I was a kid, the BBC was in schools, and a few people had different things, but the Speccy was cheap and cheerful enough that it was the machine of choice.
The Spectrum was my first computer. I grew up in Latin America, where the Spectrum was popular, and I have such fond memories. BASIC is available within a couple of seconds and it has an incredible selection of games.
Speaking of games... I've lived in US for a long time and I'm intimately familiar with both the US gaming history (My dad had an Apple II) and the current gaming market. With this said, if you like videogames, you should absolutely try Spectrum games; not the conversions, which are generally poor, but the homegrown British games from the 1980s.
The Spectrum-centric, British gaming culture from the 1980s is the closest thing we have to a gaming culture from an alien civilization. I mean no offense to my British friends here, it's actually a compliment to its uniqueness. The Spectrum scene was very much like the current Steam-centric indie gaming scene, but with a particular British (let's not forget Australia and Spain) flavor that is hard to emulate.
So many homegrown games, so many small 1/2-people gaming shops, so many amazing gems unlike everything else you've ever played. If you are a serious gamer, you owe yourself to spend a few weeks looking into the Spectrum library.
By the way, you can get a taste of it in Black Mirror's "Bandersnatch" episode.
When I was 10 I had a BBC Micro and one of my friends had a ZX Spectrum, really remember going to each others houses and playing games. It was amazing hearing the Ghostbusters theme on the spectrum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMIphX8Ipak ... the game itself was pretty confusing but fun to try and figure out
In 1985, my parents went to West Germany with an organized tour and smuggled a ZX Spectrum for us. At the same time, they sent me to a computer - focused daycamp at a community center. Yes, of course, we played games, I was ten but I learned ZX Spectrum BASIC, too.
Jump forward twenty years and I got my first Western programming job for the then-unimaginable 5000 USD a month. This company also happened to be headquartered in Vancouver where I decided to immigrate to and they helped me doing so. And when this company got acquired four years later, I got a salary high enough to buy my own apartment on the beautiful seashore of Vancouver.
My father went to West Germany on a business trip with instructions to purchase Spectrum. Sadly, he returned with Atari 800 XL. I say sadly because any software was very hard to find in ex Yugoslavia while stuff for Spectrum was widely spread (all pirated, of course), even transmitted on FM radio.
Although I didn't move to Canada, it lead to the similar outcome of a good IT career. In essence, cheap home computers opened our eyes as to what oportunities exist, and that we are not bounded by borders where we were born in. I'm sure there are many success stories from East Europe which started with Spectrum, C64, or even Atari 800XL.
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