Description
The ZX81 is a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and
manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the
United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was
designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general
public. It was hugely successful and more than 1.5 million units were
sold before it was eventually discontinued. The ZX81 found commercial
success in many other countries, notably the United States, where it was
initially sold as the ZX-81. Timex manufactured and distributed it under
licence and enjoyed a substantial but brief boom in sales. Timex later
produced its own versions of the ZX81 for the US market – the Timex
Sinclair 1000 and Timex Sinclair 1500. Unauthorised clones of the ZX81
were produced in a number of countries.
The ZX81 was designed to be small, simple, and above all cheap, using as
few components as possible to keep the cost down. Video output was to a
television set rather than a dedicated monitor. Programs and data were
loaded and saved onto audio tape cassettes. It had only four silicon
chips on board and a mere 1 KB of memory. The machine had no power
switch or any moving parts (with the exception of a VHF TV channel
selector switch present on early "ZX81 USA" models and the
Timex-Sinclair 1000), and used a pressure-sensitive membrane keyboard
for manual input. The ZX81's limitations prompted the emergence of a
flourishing market in third-party peripherals to improve its
capabilities. Such limitations, however, achieved Sinclair's objective
of keeping the cost of the machine as low as possible. Its distinctive
design brought its designer, Rick Dickinson, a Design Council award.
The ZX81 could be bought by mail order in kit form or pre-assembled. In
what was then a major innovation, it was the first cheap mass-market
home computer that could be bought from high street stores, led by W.H.
Smith and soon many other retailers. The ZX81 marked the first time that
computing in Britain became an activity for the general public, rather
than the preserve of businesspeople and electronics hobbyists. It
inspired the creation of a huge community of enthusiasts, some of whom
founded their own businesses producing software and hardware for the
ZX81. Many went on to play a major role in the British computer industry
in later years. The ZX81's commercial success made Sinclair Research one
of Britain's leading computer manufacturers and earned a fortune and an
eventual knighthood for the company's founder, Sir Clive Sinclair.
Specifications
Sinclair ZX81 Specifications Instances
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