60 Fun Facts About ZX Spectrum

On what date in 1982 was the ZX Spectrum first released in Britain?

Sinclair unveiled it to journalists at the Churchill Hotel in Marylebone that day.

Roughly how many ZX Spectrums were sold in total?

It was Britain's top-selling computer until the Amstrad PCW overtook it in the 1990s.

The Spectrum was manufactured in Dundee by which company, better known for watches?

Timex director Fred Olsen wanted to diversify beyond mechanical watches.

Which industrial designer created the Spectrum's case, rainbow motif and rubber keyboard?

His drawing board is now in the Science Museum in London.

The name 'Spectrum' was chosen to emphasise what?

During development it was called the ZX81 Colour or ZX82.

How was software loaded into a standard Spectrum?

Video went to an ordinary television rather than a monitor.

What was the launch price of the 16 KB Spectrum?

The 48 KB model was £175, about a third of the price of an Apple II.

The Spectrum's rubber keys were famously said to feel like what?

Sinclair conceded the rubber mould was 'unusual'.

Which processor, running at 3.5 MHz, powered the ZX Spectrum?

Its 16-bit address bus could only reach 64 KB directly, which is why the 128 needed bank switching.

Which single chip integrating the ZX Spectrum's essential hardware did Richard Altwasser design?

The uncommitted logic array also handled a graphics mode that used under 7 KB of memory.

Because colour was stored per 8x8 cell, the Spectrum suffered from what graphical limitation?

Only two colours could appear in any 8x8 block; the Amstrad CPC and C64 did not share the problem.

Besides colour bits, each ZX Spectrum attribute byte held one bit for brightness and one for what?

That gave the machine its 15-colour palette.

Who wrote most of the Spectrum's ROM code and Sinclair BASIC, working for Nine Tiles?

Nine Tiles and Sinclair fell out over how much of the ZX81 software to reuse.

What was distinctive about how BASIC keywords were typed on the Spectrum?

All 192 functions had to fit on 40 physical keys.

What data rate did the Spectrum's cassette interface achieve, beating the target of 1000?

Unlike the ZX81, it could keep the display up while loading, so games could show a loading screen.

The original Spectrum's sound came from what?

The BEEP command tied up the processor until the note finished.

How was the Spectrum initially sold, leading to a backlog of 40,000 orders by summer 1982?

Sinclair issued a public apology in September 1982; supply only normalised at Christmas.

Under what name was an enhanced Spectrum sold in the United States from 1983?

It flopped and Timex Sinclair collapsed the following year.

Which magazine's gossip columnist is credited with creating the 'Uncle Clive' persona for Sinclair?

The Sun called him the most prodigious inventor since Leonardo da Vinci.

Clive Sinclair was knighted in the 1983 Birthday Honours on the recommendation of which prime minister?

Sinclair Research made a £14 million profit that year.

The Spectrum's intended successor, announced in January 1984, was which flop?

Only 139,454 were made; a gold-coloured QL was given away as the five-millionth Sinclair machine.

The ZX Spectrum 128 was launched first in which country, financed by distributor Investrónica?

A Spanish tax on computers with 64 KB or less helped prompt it; the UK launch waited until January 1986.

Which chip gave the Spectrum 128 three-channel sound and MIDI compatibility?

The 128 also had 32 KB of ROM and an RS-232 port but no internal speaker.

In April 1986 Sinclair sold its computer range and brand name to Alan Sugar's Amstrad for how much?

Amstrad went on to release three more Spectrum models.

Amstrad's ZX Spectrum +2 came with what built in?

The grey machine's 'Datacorder' echoed the Amstrad CPC 464.

The 1987 ZX Spectrum +3 replaced the cassette deck with a floppy drive of what size?

It was incompatible with the Interface 1, so Microdrives could not be used.

In which year was the ZX Spectrum officially discontinued?

It had been on the market for ten years and had over 24,000 software titles.

The ZX Microdrive, launched in July 1983, stored data on what?

Each cartridge held at least 85 KB and cost £49.95, but needed the Interface 1 to connect.

The Kempston joystick interface reported joystick state at which Z80 I/O address, read in BASIC with IN?

It let Atari-standard sticks plug into the Spectrum's rear expansion slot.

Fans affectionately call the ZX Spectrum by what nickname?

Its rivals were the Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Dragon 32 and Amstrad CPC.

Which brothers founded Ultimate Play the Game in 1982 and later Rare?

Their hits included Jetpac, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore.

What was Knight Lore's isometric image-masking technique called?

Ultimate claimed to have finished it first and held it back a year to protect Sabre Wulf's sales.

In Knight Lore, Sabreman has forty days to brew a cure for what?

It was the third Sabreman game and popularised isometric graphics.

Manic Miner's in-game music is a piece by which composer?

'In the Hall of the Mountain King' plays in the caverns; 'The Blue Danube' is on the title screen.

Manic Miner was written after Bug-Byte's despatch manager asked for something like which arcade hit?

It began with sixteen screens; Smith found a way to squeeze in four more.

In Jet Set Willy, who will only let Willy go to bed once he has tidied up after the party?

It was the UK's best-selling game of 1984, despite bugs that initially made it impossible to finish.

Which musical song was dropped from early Jet Set Willy after its publishers demanded £36,000?

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata was used on the menu instead.

Melbourne House's 1982 The Hobbit understood a subset of English called what?

Every copy came with a copy of the book, by arrangement with its publishers.

Elite, later a Spectrum classic, was first published by Acornsoft in 1984 for which computer?

David Braben and Ian Bell's players start at Lave with 100 credits and a Cobra Mark III.

Chuckie Egg was written in 1983 by Nigel Alderton at roughly what age?

He took his Spectrum code to A&F Software, founded by Doug Anderson and Mike Fitzgerald.

In Skool Daze, schoolboy Eric must steal what from the staff-room safe?

Classmates include Boy Wander, Angelface and Einstein.

Hungry Horace, the first Horace game of 1982, was a clone of which arcade hit?

Horace Goes Skiing added a Frogger-style road crossing the following year.

Kevin Toms's 1982 Football Manager was written entirely in which language?

He developed it on a Video Genie, a TRS-80 clone.

Dizzy, hero of the Oliver Twins' series for Codemasters, is what?

He rolls and somersaults around, rescuing the Yolkfolk from the wizard Zaks.

Codemasters was founded in October 1986 by which brothers?

EA bought the Southam-based company in 2021 for $1.2 billion.

Crash, the Spectrum magazine famed for Oliver Frey's covers, was launched from which Shropshire town?

Roger Kean, Oliver Frey and Franco Frey formed Newsfield to publish it.

When Future plc bought Your Sinclair in 1990, the magazine joked Future had meant to buy which electric vehicle?

The title had started life in January 1984 as Your Spectrum.

The Sinclair C5 electric tricycle, unveiled in January 1985, had a top speed of what?

Only 5,000 of the 14,000 built were sold; Hoover assembled them and the chassis was by Lotus.

Which world-first product did Clive Sinclair produce in 1972?

The Sinclair Executive was followed by the ill-fated Black Watch.

The 1980 ZX80 was notable for being one of the first British computers sold for less than what?

Sinclair ordered 100,000 sets of parts on a hunch, with no market research at all.

In the 2009 BBC drama Micro Men, who played Clive Sinclair opposite Martin Freeman's Chris Curry?

Real-life BBC Micro designer Sophie Wilson cameos as a pub landlady.

A Bandersnatch alternate ending plays data-tape audio that, loaded into a Spectrum emulator, produces what?

It leads to a website with a playable version of the film's game Nohzdyve.

Where in London did Clive Sinclair unveil the ZX Spectrum to journalists on 23 April 1982?

Later that week it was shown off in a 'blaze of publicity' at the Earl's Court Computer Show.

The Spectrum's predecessor, the ZX81, sold more than how many units worldwide?

Some 60% of those sales were outside Britain, and its low price opened up a whole new market.

The 1984 ZX Spectrum+ was assembled by AB Electronics in South Wales and which Korean firm?

Released at £179, it kept the original's innards but gained a QL-style case and keyboard.

What was the codename of the ZX Spectrum 128 during its development in 1985?

It was built with Spanish distributor Investrónica and first shown at the SIMO '85 trade fair in Spain.

Which Spectrum-compatible 8-bit computer did Miles Gordon Technology launch in December 1989?

It ran a Z80B processor and was designed to be fully compatible with the 48K Spectrum.

Which communist country had some 100,000 Spectrums by 1988, making it the top home computer there?

It achieved that despite being only briefly distributed officially and never advertised there.

What share of the British home computer market did Sinclair Research hold at its mid-1980s peak?

Christmas 1984 sales were 'extremely good', but the C5 and QL flops soon drained investor confidence.

A museum dedicated to Sinclair computers opened in 2020 in Cantanhede, in which country?

Timex of Portugal had built its own Spectrum variants, including the Timex Computer 2048.