Happy 30th Birthday ZX81
30 years ago today the British home micro industry really hit the big time. The Sinclair ZX81 was released. This was the 3rd Sinclair produced micro and the first that was could be bought from high street stores, starting with W.H. Smith and quickly followed by others.
The ZX81 (later sold in the USA as the Timex 1000) came either in kit form or prebuilt and had 1K of ram as standard (although you could buy the infamous rampack of up to 16K and suffer the joys of rampack wobble after entering your code for several hours only to have it disappear when the dog knocked your table). The ZX81 was quickly followed by the Sincalir spectrum, the BBC Micro, The Acorn Atom, the Dragon, The Camputers Lynx...... for a while there in Britain anyone with 50 grand and a dream could become a computer manufacturer. It also indirectly spawned many famous hardware and software companies such as Psion, that started by writing software for the ZX81 and eventually produced such fantastic hardware as the Organizer II and the MX series. The ZX81 is also responsible in making Britian one of the best places to become a Computer Game programmer/publisher as it was the first computer for alot of kids that went on to write for the Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro.... and as adults for the  Xbox, PS1/2/3......
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZX81!!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81
