Sir Clive Sinclair & British Computer Revolution - Computerphile
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ย. 2021
- Sinclair Computers drove a computing revolution in the UK. At last you could purchase a computer for less than £100 (Approx. $230 in 1980)
RIP Sir Clive Sinclair, the man behind the ZX80, ZX81 & ZX Spectrum (30 July 1940 - 16 September 2021)
Thanks to The Centre for Computing History, Cambridge
Thanks to the National Videogame Museum, Sheffield
Additional thanks to Spencer Owen @zxspectROM for Sinclair help and to Hrvoje Cavrak for his Sir Clive graphic.
Computerphile videos referenced:
Video Game Legends: • Videogame Legends - Co...
People's Computer: Sinclair ZX81: • People's Computer: Sin...
Festive Flashing Lights: • Festive Flashing Light...
Wobbly RAM & ZX81 Drawbacks: • Wobbly RAM & ZX81 Draw...
Game Physics (in Assembler): • Game Physics (in Assem...
Sinclair & the ZX Spectrum: • Sinclair & The ZX Spec...
Atari 2600 VCS Programming: • Atari 2600 VCS Program...
/ computerphile
/ computer_phile
This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.
Computer Science at the University of Nottingham: bit.ly/nottscomputer
Computerphile is a sister project to Brady Haran's Numberphile. More at www.bradyharan.com
![บุษบา - วงชานเมือง [LiveCoverVertion] Original : เมนทอล](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Dm81sKcd9rs/mqdefault.jpg)
It's hard to express the absolute thrill of typing in a program, saving it to tape, then loading and running it at a later date. The memory still gives me goosebumps.
Now days computers are very powerful, but I do miss the excitement that came with inserting my 5.25 floppy disk and knowing I had saved something something I had created onto it. Back in the day it was a marvel
I had a Vic 20 from a teacher (when folks had pentium IIs or IIIs it i think ..i eventually found a tape drive at a 2nd hand store!)
That thing was so outdated our house got robbed and they left the computer plugged in with the screen on
I’m with you bro. Knowing the volume to set the tape player at, keeping still, watching the load screen for glitches, is was a fine art that provided many rewards . Our U.K. games industry was incredible, imaginative & cheap enough to gamble on unlike the later Japanese/US invasion. Of course we had mega drive & Nintendo 64 & onward generations up to my Xbox series s but I still long for those halcyon days when everything was new x cheers sir Clive
That was the perfect ending!
Yes beautiful, i cried a little
I was half expecting an R Tape Loading Error, but that SCREEN$ brought a tear to my eye.
For us early 50s computer geeks I think the point made that these machines could be understood completely can't be understated. Unlike the subsequent generations who were very unlikely to completely understand their computers on both a hardware and software level, we were motivated on a completely different level. I distinctly remember the let down when I upgraded from my Z80 VZ200 (Laser 200) to an Amigo 500 in not being able to get all the info to explain what went on in those dedicated chips!
I can’t even imagine how it feels now to see how much there is we don’t know with what is happening behind the scenes on modern tech!
My Computer Science Professor told us his first experience as a kid with computers was writing a Morse code program on a ZX81 and recording beeps from shortwave radio. Loaded the program up on the ZX81 , ejected the tape once the program was loaded, then inserted the c90 tape that recorded the Morse code from the shortwave radio. Hit play on tape and enter on the keyboard and watched as the screen printed out " All Ships raise anchors, pirates observed in the area"
Must have been like magic to a kid in the 1981
In Sweden a radio station used to broadcast games and programs over the radio for enthusiasts the record from the radio and load into Spectrums and Commodore 64s
In the early 1980s, one of the teletext services (BBC's Ceefax maybe?) late at night would broadcast computer programs for download as the background "music".
I had a meeting with Clive the morning of his knighthood. He walked from his office in Motcombe St to Buckingham Palace. Got knighted and walked back to work (and the meeting with me). Very cool. I think we had to drag him out to celebrate.
He was far ahead of his time. You may not be aware of his wafer scale project. We prototyped a wafer scale processor back in the mid 80's but in a way it was a solution looking for a problem. I see Cerebras have recently announced a wafer scale trillion transistor processor for AI. 35 years later.
But I'll mainly remember him as a friend with a laugh that was pure Clive.
Can you tell us about Loki?
Clive was a viciously right-wing exploiter of workers and the poor, who took all the credit for the efforts of his employees while stealing their surplus labour value. He was an enemy to democracy and justice.
@@gloverelaxis the word genius would have been sufficient
I love the ending; the sound of bitmaps loading from tape followed by the colour data is forever imprinted in my brain! Seeing (and hearing) a loading screen like this when loading games from tape was sometimes even better than the game itself :)
It's actually philosophically interesting that geometric and sensory data are in a sense seperate in the brain too, and can be processed independently, suggesting a deeper constraint from physics on disperate systems.
ZX81 (actually Timex 1000) was my family first computer. Late 80s, behind iron curtain. We had manual in English only we couldn't understand with dictionary from 70s :D But there was lot of fun with this little machine.
today will say 'Zed' instead of 'Zee' in respect to tipping the hat to the memory of Sir Clive Sinclair - the Zed X Spectrum - a great contribution toward personalizing the computer revolution
Well...it is the correct way of saying the letter Z....
@@ChrisLee-yr7tz Everyone says Zeebra - not Zedebra when pronouncing Zebra
Because even though there's just one short vowel letter 'e', the letter 'z' inflects the long 'e' 'zee' pronunciation
Why? Because 'Z' is the letter xee not the letter xed. 'Z' does not impart an 'eh' sound to the letter 'e', but instead imparts a 'ee' sound
(Sigh. How did the Brits get so confused about their own language?)
but now back to happy thoughts about the contribution of Sir Sinclair to computing history
@@TheSulross LOL. What's a Zeeeebra?. Never heard of it. It's most definitely Zebra.
And who's everyone? 🤣🤣🤣
Next you'll be telling me the letter aitch should be written and pronounced haitch like the poorly educated here.
Touching memories! I've started in IT in 1990 on a ZX Spectrum Clone (Romanian clone called HC-90) and here I am, 31 years later an IT professional.
I must have been 13 years old and was the only person I knew who had the Spectrum's printer.
I'd been given lines by the head of year at school so did them on my brand new printer.
He was so shocked at me being so cheeky but let me off for using my initiative and couldn't quite get his head around what I'd just done.
I liked the extreme minimalism of Sinclair Research and Amstrad's engineering. E.g. in the ZX81, the display was generated by having the Z80 'execute' the display file. In one of the PCW machines, there was no ROM chip for the Z80 - the ULA worked with the 8041 printer controller to load the first stage bootloader from the 8041's ROM. The Spectrum's ULA was incredibly minimalist and the memory map was cunningly arranged so that the attribute for a character was at an address where only the top bits (column address) differed - the low order (row address) bits were the same. So you could keep the row address constant and just reload the column address. All of which made the machines cheap, which meant they sold, which meant there was software for them. And per character attribute combined with 1bpp bitmap meant you could actually do a lot in software. You can see from Manic Miner's disassembly how efficient preshifted sprites were on a Spectrum.
Incidentally, $A9 is LDA #IMM for 6502, not Z80.
I had the ZX80. It was all made out of chips you could get the datasheet for.
I built my own 16K memory expansion for it.
I got a copy of the ZX81's ROM and modified the thing to use a EEPROM that was twice as big and a switch to allow me to select which machine it woke up as when powered on.
He greatly influenced my computer purchase in 1981, as he set the price that every other manufacturer could charge by being the lowest cost contender. Thank you sir.
Thank you for many fun hours and days Sir Clive. RIP. I had the pleasure of owning and building some of your products,
- Sinclair Micromatic pocket radio kit (1967 - 1971)
- Sinclair "Black Watch" watch kit (1975)
- Sinclair Cambridge type 3, self-build calculator kit (1975)
- Sinclair ZX81 kit (1981)
My dream computer in 1984 was the Sinclair QL (Quantum Leap), but unfortunately, I could never afford to buy one.
What would be your dream computer now?
Don’t forget the Mk14 kit based on the SC/MP (INS 8060) processor with hex keyboard and 7 segment LED display, which must have been 1978.
@@MRCAGR1 Indeed, I had one, Wikipedia reports them as £39.95 and 15000 were sold
@@ianh9772 with a grand total of 256 bytes of RAM? I worked as a technician in a laboratory at Bristol Polytechnic and they had a National Semiconductor SC/MP development system, which is where I learned to program in hexadecimal. It amazes me what we were able to do using the inbuilt machine code monitor and 256 bytes of RAM!
Nobody mentioned the Blue Tack,
It was the preferred method for preventing RAM Wobble.
It is mentioned in Micro Men
Uncle Clive did inspire lots of people here in Brazil where in around 1981 we had the opportunity to purchase the Sinclair ZX 80 clone sold here as Microdigital TK 80.
As we saying on a recent episode of Retro Asylum, we feel sorry for those people who never had a home micro such as a Spectrum and didn’t dabble in coding.
@cuffyx cuffyx You just lived on the wrong side of the channel. Here in NL, the Speccy was loathed and had a tiny, negligible market share. I only have had one friend with a Speccy. Schools here in NL sort of standardised on the MSX because Philips was one of the big MSX system producers in Europe. So there was a lot of MSX software, almost as much as C64.
I remember one game at school, and you were this little chopper sprite. And it would give the name of Dutch city and you had to fly there, but you had limited fuel and/or time, so you had to fly as direct as possible.
And I loved that so much.
@cuffyx cuffyx In the second half of the 80s the MSX had a pretty decent install base here in NL. It never exceeded the install base of the C64 here.
I had the C64, my best friend had the ZX Speccy. He had those tiny endless tapes I found super cool. The speccy certainly had it's own unique style and charm. I was not envious of the keyboard tho...
Same here! I was outraged when I saw my friend's Speccy and typed load and I was like: "How do you write a whole program on this?!" And those colour ugh! :D
I am glad I stated with a VIC20 and 2 years later graduated to a C64. I'd probably would not have become an electronics/software engineer if I had the Speccy. And if these machines were common in NL (extremely rare) my parents would've bought that for sure :D
Love the tape image load at the end
Sadly, Spectrums weren't sold where I lived in Canada, and never got to use them. But anyone worth their salt knows and respects how important Sinclair and his computers were. One thing that bothers me about many obituaries is how they seem to mock Sinclair for his failures, not celebrate him for his achievements.
Eaton's sold the ZX81 as the Timex Sinclair 1000; they were probably in other stores as well, but getting into a department-store-sized town was a bit of a road trip for me at the time, so I didn't do that much checking around. By the time the Spectrum came out, I was off doing Forces things. There was, however, the typical Canadian retail price bump. Still, they were quite a bit cheaper than the Tandy machines at Radio Shack or the PET-era Commodores.
I'm quite glad they didn't as it made me go down the commodore route (vic20/c64/c128/amiga) the amiga still giving me most of my great memories
I hope this doesn’t seem rude to mention (I appreciate your comment) but the phrase is “anyone worth their salt” :)
@@donquixoteupinhere "Autocorrect" on a crappy phone which I can't turn off, not my doing. I never use it on my laptop because it uses yank "spellings".
Intro: Sitting there talking about Sir Clive with an empty desk and an Apple computer on it. Interesting.
The ZX81 was what got me into this field that I'm plugging away at all these years later. I assembled the ZX-81 kit and will never forget how proud I was as a young teen in Africa watching this thing boot for the first time with that flashing cursor.
Inventing all everything 'ZX81, ZX82, ZX Spectrum, C5, Calculator' the late and very intelligent Sir Clive Sinclair.
I wrote my first program in ZX BASIC when I was about 10 or 11. It literally changed my life. I owe Sir Clive more than I can properly express in words.
Without the computers that Sir Clive gave us in the 80’s I can categorically say I’d not be a network engineer today, the spark that little black box gave me back in 1981 has stayed with me my entire life.
I'm assuming you were a child when it came out.. did you get that tingle in your belly? Like a foreshadowing, knowing and feeling that computers were going to be huge?
I spent the summer of 86 coding a zx spectrum instead of playing football with my friends. I was 8 yo. I am now a Data Scientist with a PhD in Chemistry. Thank you Sir Sinclair, thank you computerphile! My kids are 5 and 8 yo now, they already write code… 😃
Was lucky to have met and spoke to him at computer fairs twice in the 80s and once at a MENSA gathering. Perfect gentleman years ahead of his time. Sadly, many modern computer science students havent heard anything about him or his impact on history.
I remember enjoying Jetpack, as a kid, on a friends Spectrum. Sir Clive was always ahead of his time. I think he would have made a success of a more modern C-5 product, if he was around today.
In the 80s living in South Africa I bought a Sinclair Specrum 16K. I programmed my own games but the games i remember were Hungry Horace, Sabre - Rambo First Blood, Cookie and there was a Managerie game of some sort which I really enjoyed.
I am now a professional programmer in c# , SQL , react , node angular etc and it’s all because I owned a Sinclair when I was 10.
A brilliant tribute to Sir Clive and the team behind Sinclair computers! I saw that copy of Elite there. And the Sharp MZ-80K behind Jason! (Which was my personal history in early computing.) Thank you for putting this together.
As a ZX Spectrum owner as a kid, this hits close to home. Thanks for the video!
Those were the days! It all began for me with the ZX80 then 81 and got me going, then later a C64. Oh my, those hours and hours of copying code from magazines, but I learned so much! We were writing programs in Basic to do music that used simple loops and subroutines to read Assembly Language routines to talk to a Buchla 100 series synth. Great memories! Great episode! Thank You!!
Very nice, loved the bit at the end :)
I ran an emulator recently. It's so weird that i still remember the shortcut keys on a modern keyboard. When I think about it, this was the start of a beautiful career as a software developer (now writing 30 years later). It's hard to express the gratitude, nostalgia and the shivers that i get when i think about the stuff i wrote, the games I played and the time spent with the machine. I still remember how the computer smelled like if that makes any sense :D. Thank you so much!
What a time to be alive 🤓 A ZX81 and a 16K expansion pack RIP Clive :)
Sir Clive made computing affordable and introduced computers to the homes of many, myself included. My very first computer was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K in 1982. From games to coding, my facination with computers is as strong as ever, so I thank you Clive.
I love how Prof. Altenkirch calls DIP switches a "mouse piano", because "Mäuseklavier" is such a german word to directly translate.
That took me a second. My first Z80 was one my friend got giftet 1990 (I'm from East Germany) I already was the computer guy back then and had to make it run without documentation.
I wondered what he meant!
"mouse piano" in the US was only used for one type of dip-switch as I recall. It was the type with a toggle and not the type with a rocker.
My first computer was the zx81 and I still have it . And what was done with it was truly amazing , hi res graphics and sound, neither of which it was meant to have . Absolutely Incredible .
Simple but genuine and warmed-hearted memories there, especially from Prof. Garibaldi ❤️
Very cool memorial tribute at the end.❤️
It’s nice to see a modern take on that Clive graphic and even better (sorry) was that you showed it loading in real-time 😊
surprised to find i'm watching this on the one year anniversary of his death :( Rest in power, Sir Clive!
Great episode!!
What a wonderful mini-documentary. I do remember the moments of when friends and I entered high school. There were posters of the ZX80 in some of our classrooms. In the late 70s and early 80s schools in Québec were mostly stocking Apple II, II+, and IIe computers. So, I went with buying an Apple II+ kit (aka Orange). Even after all these years and while watching the documentary, I feel the pangs of not having had a Sinclair. Nostalgia is a funny thang.
Such great interviews and memories of the man who basically started home computing.
RIp Sir Clive. I grew up with your computers and thanks to my mom it gave so much to life, career and travel. No idea what skills I learnt from playing games all night back then but it was fantastic.
This is extremely inspirational
...
I built my ZX81 from a kit. The ram was upgraded from 1 to 16K internally with very expensive 16K static ram at my local electronics shop. No wobble for me! I bought an issue 1 16K spectrum and then got the 32K ram daughterboard upgrade. All paid from my paper round money.
Super video for a great man
The ending of the video is BRILLIANT
I wonder who will take the last section of audio and play it into a spectrum to see if the same image loads :)
It is the same image. I used Audacity, amplified the recording, then exported to a WAV file. FUSE will open a WAV. Then just LOAD "" CODE.
Lo intente, pero no me funciono...
I've listened to images being loaded so many times, I can tell just by listening that the sounds match the pixels appearing on screen. If it had been a different image, I would be able to tell.
My first computer - Sinclair ZX81, kit built. Thank you Sir Clive!
I got a ZX81 in 1982 when I was 17. I wanted a Spectrum but couldn't afford it. I could just barely afford the £50 for the ZX81 when Sinclair reduced the price, as was the case with a lot of poor schoolkids back then.
That one purchase set me on the path to a career in computers, so I have Sir Clive (and later Jack Tramiel for the C64) to thank for my career, and the direction of my life.
Even though I never owned a Spectrum back then I still have immense nostalgia for the machine, as I was often around my richer friends houses to play on theirs!
I recently bought a re-furbed ZX81and ZX Spectrum and I've been re-living my youth, playing the old games and typing in programs from the manuals and thoroughly enjoying it.
I really recommend using the original hardware, as emulators just don't have the same 'feel'.
Huge influence on me getting into computers. I was writing programs at 7-8 years old as language was so intuitive. Playing Dizzy, Green Beret and Ikari warriors was so much fun after a hard day in school... remember those? :-)
I'm from the US (and way too young being born in 92 to have experienced the prime of micros) so the Sinclair or Timex machines weren't exactly popular here. I started learning Assembly and then C later on with an Apple IIGS in the late 90's. It was discontinued in 92, but I got (still have and use often actually) a Woz Edition as a gift that was fully loaded with the best expansion cards, accelerator, etc you could get with 5.25" disk drives, 3.5" disk drives, a great monitor, etc. On the IIGS, and C128 I also had picked up second hand, I made tile editors to create character sets and sprites instead of using graphing paper and hard coding them by hand. I'm assuming the limitations of hardware made that not so much an option with the ZX80/81.
I met one of the Oliver twins at a student even in Sheffield a few years ago.
He's still very passionate about Dizzy and the role the ZX played in kickstarting his interest in games and programming.
Haha I remember 'clocking' Jetpac and thinking I was king of the world.
And totally agree with the general sentiment in the video; I got my zx81 when I was 11 and am now a researcher working on AI and vehicular autonomy.
I still have my ZX81 and play "duck shooting" for fun sometimes.
I saw the zx80s and 81s in the computer club at school, but I ended up buying the speccy 48k :) I too got jetpack with it and loved it along with many other games like sabrewulf, trans-am, underworld, android 2, TLL, etc. I loved the wierd spongy keys too.
p.s I saw The elite box :) My fav game ever from that era! But I got that a few years after the speccy, on the c64.
The first computer I touched was a ZX81. I was 11 and absolutely thrilled that I could store variables (with one-character names) and calculate with them. Later I got a Spectrum+. Tought me programming and a bit of British culture. The whole line was quirky British, and the magazines (Crash! etc.) and many of the games had British humour in them. RIP Sir Clive!
I went to the university of Nottingham around 10 years ago and studied computer science but eventually dropped out. I now work at an AI company writing full stack software to help visualise the AI’s output… amazing to see how much talent from Nottingham is in this video! Hat’s off (I remember Steve and his course was very interesting and also tough!)
(Edit: is this channel run by Nottingham uni per chance? I got further along and recognise Thorsten too! Sp?)
If it was not for the ZX80, ZX81 and spectrum I would still be a road sweeper.
And he died at age 81. How ironic. What a legendary computing icon.
Manic Miner forever
The loading screen art was actually quite easy once u understand 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128
Sinclair's first products that I I recall were his scientific calculators which a university student could actually afford. Entering calculations in reverse polish notation. Certainly made you write tight code.
1:49 we’ll, I’ll come back later Grady but I’m off to watch it again. Best docudrama ever.
ZX81 was my first computer, it brought me into the software business and is in a way even responsible for the next generation, as one of my daughters followed me.
What a great man we lost.
Thanks a lot, i'm 40, and i had something like same childhood. 40 and something like because i'm growing up in russian countryside and we had in that times a little late access to computer techniques
Sinclair was a great bloke for what he did,
26:44 - "If I can't code it or see a way to code it, I know I don't understand it" (Phil Moriarty) great quote
"Don't worry. This baby has crashed more times than a ZX 81."
14:20 It still is. May WHSmith long continue, holds fond memories.
Long live the memory of Uncle Clive
I was aware of these while I lived on Long Island, New York. My first computer at home didn't happen until 1986 Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80
I have a Sinclair digital multimeter. Last I checked it still works.
My first computer
First computer I touched with my hand! 😍
My very first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. It never occurred to me to wonder who "Sinclair" was. Cool!
I had the Timex version. Something I was able to afford as a teen. Could I get my program typed in before the power connector glitched and I started over. Great times.
ZX81 basic was not bad. You could have variable names up to 32 characters long and use long variable names assigned to statement numbers for subroutines to make your code much more readable. Did an orbital mechanics program in it for predicting positions of all the planets. I learnt Z80 assembler and used an inline assembler that was coded in the comments of an empty Basic program. I remember writing a version of Eratosthenes Sieve (prime number algorithm) in assembler to see how fast it would go compared to the university DEC Vax mini computer. I think I got it to about 1/5 the speed. It was a long time ago... It was very satisfying to get so much out of such a cheap machine.
Exciting times.
RIP Sir Clive
A bit generous about the C5, the most unusual use for a hairdryer motor.
I recognize that switch on Prof Bagley 's desk! Looks like a FORE Systems ASX-200BX, Ericsson branded. Is there an video on ATM in our future?
Perfect.
I see a lot of parallels between the impact that this had on computing back then and the impact that the Raspberry Pi is having on computing today. Make computers simple and accessible to anyone with a few bucks and a healthy curiosity.
My first computer was the Acorn Electron. But was handy because school at the time used BBC micro systems. Can remember taking my books and magazines I had to school to write my programs out. The school had a full mainframe. Those were the days
still have fond memories of my QL and before that my Compukit 101.
Briefly had a Timex Sinclair 1000 as a kid (soon moved up -- way up ;) -- to an Atari 1200XL). The RAM pack wobble was real, and it's both hilarious and sad to hear everyone from the UK had the same problem as we did here in the US 🤣
ZX80 was our first computer, and dad upgraded it to a ZX81. (I thought he botched it because the screen flickered on every key press, didn't learn why that was normal until I saw this video.)
Thanks to them I could try our programming in basic when I was only 8 yrs old. I gave up on making games quite soon as I never found a way to make them interactive thanks to the screen being blank during program execution. Also that keyboard made my fingers sore in a hurry...
I was lucky to get spectrum 2 days after UK promotion shiped to Yugoslavia
I loved lemmings as a kid! I didn’t know it was a zx game. I was a bit young for that - my first was a x286. Maybe it was a 386?. It was well before windows- but I was also like 5 or 6
London needs a Sir Clive Sinclair statue somewhere important to man that got the youth of Britain into the IT industry. He was like the English Elon Musk of the 1980's
My first computer experience was with a borrowed zx81 and only later did I realise you could actually get jobs playing with computers and earn tons on money from it. Still doing it today.
I used to type in programs from magazines before I had a cassette recorder. I obviously lost hours of typing once I shut it down.
thanks for all the unlicensed soviet spectrum clones
Those were the days...
Ohh, 256 likes. I can't hit the like button :(
Loved this so much. I am of that generation, and I am of the view that unless you can't write functioning assembly language for your machine, and truly understand the system libraries, then you don't know that machine. Way back when, a colleague of mine wired up his ZX81 to a big old Honeywell teletype as a text output device and it worked. He probably inadvertently discovered an early variant of RS232!
There's perhaps an urban myth that someone once wrote a functioning chess program for the ZX80 that ran on a 1kB machine - any idea or evidence if that might be true?
1K Chess existed for the ZX81.
I still want to try a bit of Z80 assembly. It has some fascinating machines. I'm more of a 6502 guy though. I just love to death the NES, C64, and the Apple II
The OG Gameboy is probably your lad, then. It's like a NES wth a z80 instead of a 6502.
Which is ironic, since the decision to go with a 6502 in the NES was apparently quite controversial at Nintendo, since most of their arcade boards were z80 based at the time.
A personal hero has departed.
I can still recognise the sound of Manic Miner loading…
My first computer...in 1965: IBM 1401/7094. Taught myself 1401 assembler, and FORTRAN IV