60 Facts About Sinclair ZX81

Sinclair ZX81 was designed to be small, simple, and above all, inexpensive, with as few components as possible.

The Sinclair ZX81's limitations prompted a market in third-party peripherals to improve its capabilities.

Sinclair ZX81 could be bought by mail order preassembled or, for a lower price, in kit form.

The Sinclair ZX81 marked the point when computing in Britain became an activity for the general public rather than the preserve of businessmen and electronics hobbyists.

Sinclair ZX81's designers adopted an improved approach, involving the use of two modes called SLOW and FAST respectively.

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Edge connector or external interface at the rear of the Sinclair ZX81 is an extension of the main printed circuit board.

Sinclair ZX81 entered a new market in 1972 when it launched the first "slimline" pocket calculator, the Sinclair Executive.

Sinclair ZX81 disagreed vehemently with what he characterised as the view "that there was no future in consumer electronics".

Sinclair ZX81 followed up the MK14 by producing the ZX80, at the time the world's smallest and cheapest computer, which was launched in January 1980 costing £99.

The main difference between the two machines lay in the internal software; when the Sinclair ZX81 was released, ZX80 owners were able to upgrade by the relatively simple expedient of plugging a new ROM onto the circuit board.

Sinclair ZX81 was renamed Sinclair Computers in November 1980, reflecting its new focus, and became Sinclair Research in March 1981.

Launch of the Sinclair ZX81 was catalysed in part by the BBC Computer Literacy Project's plan to produce The Computer Programme TV series, to be broadcast in 1982, aimed at popularising computing and programming.

When Clive Sinclair heard of the project in December 1980, he wrote to the BBC informing them that he would be announcing a new version of the ZX80, to be called the ZX81, in early 1981.

Sinclair wanted the ZX81 to be a candidate for the BBC contract and lobbied for its adoption.

Prototype ZX81 was demonstrated to BBC representatives in January 1981, while Sinclair's local rival Acorn Computers put forward their proposed Proton computer, a design – of which a prototype did not yet exist – based on the Acorn Atom.

The Sinclair ZX81 cannot be expanded; it is fundamentally a throw-away consumer product.

Sinclair ZX81 was critical of the BBC's decision, accusing it of incompetence and arrogance.

Development of the Sinclair ZX81 got under way even before the ZX80 had been launched.

Sinclair ZX81 sought to fix some of the more annoying problems with the ZX80.

Computing folklore held that the Sinclair ZX81 had to be refrigerated by balancing a carton of cold milk on top of the case.

Clive Sinclair re-commissioned a company called Nine Tiles, which had produced the ZX80 ROM, to develop the new ROM software for the ZX81.

Sinclair ZX81 was launched on 5 March 1981 in two versions – a pre-assembled machine or a cheaper kit version, which the user could assemble himself.

The ZX80 had proved more popular than expected and Sinclair ZX81's existing manufacturer, a small electronics company in St Ives, lacked the resources to deal with the demand.

The Sinclair ZX81 production line is a miracle of efficiency; after all, one is made every 10 seconds.

The value for money of Sinclair ZX81's products was emphasised by the prices being printed in larger type than any other text on the spread.

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Less than $100, the Sinclair ZX81 will get you started in personal computing right now.

Sinclair ZX81 himself became a focal point for the marketing campaign, putting a human face on the business, while Sinclair ZX81 Research was portrayed in the media as a plucky British challenger taking on the technical and marketing might of giant American and Japanese corporations.

The Sinclair ZX81 had been designed to meet a £70 price point and was launched at a price of £69.

One Sinclair brochure presented a side-by-side comparison of the ZX81 with the four machines that Sinclair considered its main rivals – the Acorn Atom, Apple II Plus, Commodore PET and TRS-80.

Sinclair ZX81 could have launched the ZX81 at a higher price, marketing it in a more traditional way as a premium product, but chose not to.

When sales fell in the wake of the launch of its successor, the ZX Spectrum, Sinclair ZX81 reduced the price of the pre-assembled version to £49.

Sinclair had previously made its name as a mail-order retailer – the ZX81 was initially available only through mail-order – but the only truly effective way to reach the mass market was via high street stores.

Sinclair ZX81 had stagnated in the 1970s and was looking for ways to revitalise its image and expand its product range.

The commercial success and mass market potential of the ZX80 caught Rowland's interest; he approached Sinclair, saw a prototype ZX81 and agreed to market the machine through Smith's on an exclusive basis for the first six months after launch.

The Sinclair ZX81 would be sold in 112 stores around the UK and would serve as the centrepiece of the "Computer Know-How" sections.

In February 1982 Timex obtained a licence from Sinclair to sell the ZX81 directly through thousands of retail outlets in the US, paying Sinclair Research a 5 per cent royalty on all Sinclair hardware and software sold by Timex.

Sinclair ZX81 was later to produce its own licensed clones and variants of the ZX81.

Sinclair ZX81 was sold for a while in duty-free shops at UK airports.

Reviews of the Sinclair ZX81 highlighted the great value for money offered by the machine but noted its technical shortcomings.

Sinclair ZX81 found the ZX81 to be alarmingly unreliable, having to have his first two test machines replaced before getting one that worked properly.

Sinclair ZX81 highlighted weaknesses in the manual and Sinclair's accompanying software, criticising them for "a misconceived design and sloppiness in execution which make the machine seem harder to use and more limited than it should" and questioned whether it might be more worthwhile to save up for a more powerful computer such as Acorn or Commodore's offerings.

Paul Taylor of the Financial Times found the Sinclair ZX81 to be "a powerful and flexible little computer ideally suited as a fun introduction to the mysteries of home computing" but cautioned readers about its limitations.

Success of the Sinclair ZX81 led almost immediately to enthusiasts producing a huge variety of peripherals and software.

Clive Sinclair ZX81 was "amused and gratified" by the attention the machine received but other than what Clarke described as "a few remarkably poor programs on cassette", his company made little effort to exploit the demand, effectively ceding a very lucrative market to third party suppliers, a decision that undoubtedly forfeited a lot of potential earnings.

Sinclair ZX81's popularity was publicly demonstrated in January 1982 when civil servant Mike Johnstone organised a "ZX Microfair" at Westminster Central Hall.

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Thousands of Sinclair ZX81 programs were published, either as type-in programs or as ready-made applications that could be loaded from cassette tape.

Many computer magazines featured ZX81 program listings – some, such as Sinclair Programs, were dedicated entirely to listings – while many individuals became the archetypal "bedroom programmers", producing games and applications which they produced, marketed, recorded, and sold from their own homes.

Psion's success with the Sinclair ZX81 had a profound effect on the future of the company.

Some most popular Sinclair ZX81 games were rewritten for the Spectrum to take advantage of the newer machine's colour and sound capabilities.

Enterprising programmers were able to produce games for the Sinclair ZX81 using nothing more than text characters and the machine's limited text semigraphics.

Some Sinclair ZX81 games achieved lasting fame, such as 3D Monster Maze, a tense first-person perspective game that involved the player escaping a labyrinth with a Tyrannosaurus rex in pursuit.

One of the more bizarre software products for the ZX81 came about as a result of music companies attempting to capitalise on the popularity of Sinclair's computers.

We [Sinclair ZX81 Research] think they failed because of this and because of price.

Some companies outside the US and UK produced their own "pirate" versions of the ZX81 and Timex Sinclair computers, aided by weak intellectual property laws in their countries of origin.

Lambda Electronics of Hong Kong produced the Lambda 3000, based on the Sinclair ZX81, which was itself widely copied by other Chinese manufacturers.

Sinclair ZX81 received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours and the Young Businessman of the Year award in 1983.

Machine had a widespread and lasting social impact in the United Kingdom, according to Clive Sinclair, purchasers of the ZX81 came from "a reasonably broad spectrum" that ranged from readers of the upmarket Observer and Sunday Times newspapers to the more downmarket but numerous Sun readers.

The Financial Times reported in March 1982 that most Sinclair ZX81 computers were being bought for educational purposes, both for adults and children, though the children were usually able to learn much more quickly.

The Sinclair ZX81 plays a significant part in the plot of William Gibson's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition.

The Sinclair ZX81, marketed in the United States as the Timex 1000, cost less than the equivalent of a hundred dollars, but required the user to key in programs, tapping away on that little motel keyboard-sticker.