When it comes to the early days of home computing, a lot of people seem to focus on the American side of things, with the likes of Apple, Commodore, and Atari featured prominently. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – these companies helped change the world of computing forever. But what a lot of people don’t realise is that, over here in Britain in the early ’80s, our very own computer revolution was happening thanks to the likes of homegrown companies like Sinclair, Acorn, and Amstrad.

Now, don’t get me wrong – there were plenty of others, and let’s not forget the software and games companies that helped push these machines into people’s homes, but I like to think that these “big three” epitomise everythign that was great about those early British home computer pioneers.

So, let’s begin with probably the best-known of the bunch, shall we?

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Sinclair Research was founded by eccentric British inventor Clive Sinclair in 1973. The company didn’t start producing the goods until 1980, when the ZX80 was released for then-unbelievably low sum of £99.95 – making it the only home computer available in the UK for less than £100. The machine featured a Zilog Z80 CPU running at 3.25MHZ, and a mighty 1KB of RAM (upgradable to a dizzying 16KB). The machine also featured a 4KB ROM chip containing the machine’s operating system, BASIC interpreter, and a simple text editor. It was a huge success.

In 1981 the ZX81 came along, and brought with it an improved OS and BASIC interpreter and a swanky new case – but not a lot else. In fact, you could buy the ZX81 ROM chip and slap it straight into your existing ZX80, giving you a full-blown ‘81 at 20% of the price. Actual, honest-to-God user upgradeable computers were practically unheard of at the time, so this was a big deal.

In 1982 (there’s no stopping these guys!) came the infamous ZX Spectrum. The iconic black system with it’s rubbery membrane keyboard is considered to be as important to the UK computer industry as the Commodore 64 was in the US. The surrounding hype and enthusiasm of third party companies clamouring to release hardware and software for the system are often considered responsible for starting the 1980s home computer revolution over here. It’s no surprise, then, that the system was manufactured in various guises until 1987.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Spectrum also shared the Z80 processor of its predecessors, although it did come with a minimum of 16KB of RAM as standard. A huge range of official Sinclair peripherals, including disk drives, joystick interfaces, a printer and the innovative tape-based ZX Microdrive were released for the system over its lifetime. The ZX Spectrum also earned Sinclair owner Clive Sinclair a Knighthood.

That leads on quite nicely on to Amstrad. Amstrad bought Sinclair out in 1986, but had been around since 1968, when the company was founded by Alan Sugar (yes, that Alan Sugar). The company had been known for its home electronics business, with a line of low-priced tape recorders, TVs, hi-fi equipment and car stereos.

In 1984, however, due to mounting competition from Sinclair, Amstrad decided to enter the home computer market with the CPC 464. The “Colour Personal Computer” featured a Zilog Z80 just like its competitors, this time clocked at 4MHz. It also featured at least 64KB of RAM as standard, a built-in tape drive, and that now-legendary keyboard with its colour-coded keys. Interestingly, the system could also run the popular business OS CP/M as well as its own flavour of BASIC.

The CPC 464 and its successors, the 664, 472, and 6128 sold relatively well in Europe, including Britain, Germany and Spain. Perhaps the most notable feature of these machines is that the disk versions used the Motorola 3″ disk format, as opposed to the 3.5″ Sony format which was becoming dominant at the time (and eventually won the floppy disk “format war”). Like Sir Clive, Alan Sugar has also been knighted, this time for services to business.

Acorn Computers was established in 1978 by Herman Hauser and Chris Curry, oddly enough inspired by Hauser’s visit to Sinclair. The company was originally known as Cambridge Processor Unit Ltd, but later traded as Acorn, allegedly due to the name appearing before Apple in the phone book.

The company released a range of experimental kit machines and laboratory computers for the first two years, until they decided to enter the home computer market in 1980 with the Atom. The machine featured a MOS technology 6502 CPU, the same as that used in the Commodore 64, Apple II, and Atari 2600 games console. It also had 2KB of RAM, upgradeable to 12KB, and an 8KB ROM chip containing the system’s BASIC interpreter – an unusual feature of Atom BASIC is that it allowed the programmer to include 6502 assembly language inline with their code.

The machine also featured Econet, an early home networking technology, which was successfully demonstrated at the machine’s launch but was not to become truly mainstream until the machine’s successor…

The BBC Micro. This machine was perhaps many British kids’ first interaction with a computer, as schools were full of the things in the 80s and 90s. The machine got its name from the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Computer Literacy Project, of which this was the “official” computer. It was chosen by the BBC due to its build quality and the quality of its operating system.

The machine featured the 6502 CPU again, clocked at 2MHz, as well as 16KB – 128KB of RAM. It was released in 1981 to great fanfare and, thanks to its backing by the BBC, saw huge success, especially in the education sector, temporarily stealing the limelight from RM. Acorn initially estimated that they might sell 12,000 units, however the eventual figure was over 1.5 million.

Due to its high cost (£299 – £399), the machine was also released in a cut-down home version known as the Acorn Electron. It featured very similar hardware and cross-compatibility between the two systems was good, however due to its far superior connection and expansion options the BBC variant enjoyed much better peripheral support, including the infamous Turtle robot which could be commanded to roll around any flat surface by the Logo programming language.

Both machines were important early players in the development of RISC and the ARM architecture – which is still hugely popular today in mobile and embedded devices. Acorn went on the release the moderately successuly 32-bit RISC Archimedes series of computers in 1987, with production continuing until the mid-90s.

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So there we have it. A short introduction to the British home computer revolution of the early 1980s. Of course, there were other machines available, but for the sake of keeping to the point (and not boring people too much) I decided to concentrate on these three companies. Do you have any fond memories of early British computers that you’d like to share? Is there anything missing from here that you’d like to see in a follow-up article? Let us know in the comments!

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