This beautifully designed piece of technology is a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, lovingly known as a Speccy. An 8-bit home computer, released in 1982 by the UK’s Sinclair Research, it was destined to become Britain’s best-selling microcomputer. Its future success was unknown to me at the time, but as I took my precious out of its cardboard and styrofoam packaging, I could feel it was destined to become my bestest electronic friend ever.

As a child growing up in the ‘70s & ‘80s, I’d had very little experience with computers or video games until then. I’d played Pong on a friend’s Atari console and a teacher had brought a computer into school one day and let everyone play the hottest game around, Space Invaders (best day of school ever!). I’d occasionally play an arcade game too, if I had the chance and some spare 10 pence coins. However, Uncle Sid was to accelerate me into the world of information technology in 1983.

A CFO at the time, he’d been busy introducing desktop computers into the accounting department where he worked. In addition to having his own ZX81 at home (the predecessor of the Spectrum, at which I’d sit like a zombie all day during holiday visits playing computer games in black and white), he’d also sometimes bring home his work Apple computer when I visited (probably an Apple Lisa), at which I’d sit like a zombie playing games all day. (There is a pattern of behaviour here!)

On that trip to Manchester, my Dad and Uncle Sid thought (perhaps rather hopefully) that it would be educational for me to have my own computer. These things were going to be the future, after all. As an asthmatic, underweight kid wearing bottle-bottom glasses and allergic to any kind of physical exertion, I was all in on the idea – I was going to have computer games on demand! And so, I headed back home to Ireland after the wedding, tooth enamel all the worse for wear after too many wedding coca-colas, and my new best friend packed securely in my vintage ‘70s suitcase.

If you’re a Millennial or from Gen Z, and grew up with a mobile phone more powerful than the computers that put a man on the Moon, it might be hard to comprehend the computing power (or lack thereof) in something like the Spectrum. There were two versions, one with 16KB of RAM and one with 48 KB (mine was 16 KB, later upgraded to 48KB). I’m writing this blog post on a laptop with 16 GB of RAM, or one million times more RAM than my Spectrum had. I’m going to write that again in big letters – ONE MILLION TIMES MORE! That’s like going from cave painting to the Sistine Chapel in half a person’s lifetime. The video resolution was 256 X 192, with 16 colours. You plugged it into your television and loaded software using a regular cassette tape player. It had rubber keys. Yes, I know what you’re thinking – it was amazing!

Of course, there were other home computers available in the UK and Ireland at the time, such as the Commodore 64, the Acorn Electron, or the BBC Micro. But the Spectrum’s unique design, such as its rubber keyboard, made it much cheaper to produce and more accessible to kids like me.

The Spectrum could be programmed using Sinclair BASIC or Z80 assembly language. I learned to program in BASIC by typing in games from books line by line, and then debugging them by fixing my typos and generally messing around with the code. Commercial games and other software were available to buy on cassette, often created by lone developers or very small teams (Matthew Smith wrote the best-selling Manic Miner while still a teenager). Publishing houses opened to meet the gaming demands of 11 years olds and microcomputer enthusiasts everywhere. Magazines dedicated to the Speccy, such as Your Sinclair and Sinclair User, sprang up, with reviews of games and software, programming tutorials, and so on. You often received free games and demos on a cassette taped to the magazine’s cover.