54 Facts About ZX81

ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Launch of the 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.

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

ZX81 pointed out that there were already 40, 000 users of the ZX80 and that by the time the series was broadcast there were likely to be upwards of 100, 000 ZX81 users.

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.

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

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

Ferranti produced the new chip for Sinclair, who hailed Westwood's design as a triumph of innovation: "The ZX81 had four chips when our nearest competitor in this respect, the TRS-80, had 44.

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

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

Marketing of the ZX81 was handled by Sinclair's long-standing marketing agency Primary Contact, which had provided marketing services for Sinclair since 1971 and was to continue doing so until 1985.

The ZX81's benefits were promoted with the aspirational slogan "Sinclair ZX81 Personal Computer – the heart of a system that grows with you".

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

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

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.

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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.

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

Rowland himself thought that the ZX81 would sell about 10, 000 units during the first five months of the retail agreement, equivalent to one month's mail order sales by Sinclair.

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

The Japanese market's favourable reaction to the ZX81 led Mitsui to begin selling the ZX81 over the counter in large bookshops from September 1982, with annual sales of 20, 000 units predicted.

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

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

ZX81 applauded the improvements that had been made over the ZX80, such as a much better manual, display and string handling, and called the ZX81 "a very good first computer" that "will open the world of computing to many who would be denied access to it by cost.

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

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.

ZX81 described the ZX81 as "a lovely product which will have enormous appeal to people wanting to find out more about computers, but without it costing them an arm and a leg" and concluded: "If you know nothing about computers and you want to enjoy finding out about them, then this machine offers a value for money way of doing just that.

Paul Taylor of the Financial Times found the 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 ZX81 led almost immediately to enthusiasts producing a huge variety of peripherals and software.

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

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

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

Some of the most popular 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 ZX81 using nothing more than text characters and the machine's limited text semigraphics.

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Some 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.

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

ZX81 had an immediate impact on the fortunes of Sinclair Research and Clive Sinclair himself.

ZX81's profitability rose enormously, from a pretax profit of £818, 000 on a turnover of £4.

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

The 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.