Sir Clive Sinclair was the man that started it all. Born in London, 1940 he rose from humble beginnings selling radio and amplifier kits and moving on to executive calculators in 1972. Soon after this his company in Cambridge started selling revolutionary products such as pocket televisions and digital watches.

In February 1980 Sinclair Research launched the ZX80 computer. Selling less than £100 it featured 1K of RAM, a clock speed of 3.25MHz and a stylish touch-pad keyboard. Proving very popular at the time of release it is now one of the more expensive machines to purchase second-hand, with prices regularly reaching over £100 on eBay for pristine boxed models.

The successor to the ZX80 followed in March 1981 with the launch of the ZX81. Selling for £49.95 in kit form or pre-assembled for £69.95 it had similar specifications to the ZX80 with 1K of RAM which could be expandable to a massive 16K and for the first time allowed you to save or load programs from cassette tape into the memory.

Featuring a keyboard membrane exactly the same as the ZX80 gave the computer a similarly unique feel when typing your programs, sometimes having you to push the keys with a degree of force to bring the tiny black and white characters up on the screen.

1982 saw the launch of the more advanced colour ZX Spectrum. Designed for a wide variety of home and educational applications, it was to break all previous sales records - and remained a market-leader for nearly a decade.

Featuring a mind-blowing 3.5Mhz Z80 CPU, a 'proper' keyboard and colour graphics with a high resolution screen of 256 x 192 pixels, and not forgetting the 16K ROM containing the Basic programming language and operating system. The RAM was available in 16K or 48K sizes - ideal for loading your programs from cassette tape into memory.

Subsequent developments for the ZX Spectrum were made in the form of many and varied peripherals and interfaces, including the ZX Microdrive storage facility which unfortunately proved to be less than reliable.

January 1984 saw the introduction of the Sinclair QL (Quantum Leap), priced at £399 - and was at the time the first computer for home and business applications to use the powerful Motorola 68000 'chip' family as its principal processor.

October 1984 was the release date in the UK for the Spectrum +. This model was basically the 48k machine but in a different case, featuring a plastic keyboard and a handy reset button. It retailed at £179.95 .

In January 1986 the UK market finally received the new Sinclair Spectrum 128. This was a vastly improved model on the previous releases. The case looked similar to the + model but featured a large heatsink on the right-hand side. A whopping 128k of RAM was available, plus enhanced sound in the form of a three-channel AY-3-8912 sound chip which for the first time was produced through the television! A new front end was also added, featuring colourful menus.

The Basic operating system also included new commands to take advantage of the 128k's new features such as PLAY for accessing the new sound chip, and SPECTRUM which turned the computer into a 48k model, enabling maximum compatibility for games.

1986 also saw Sinclair selling it's computer range and the 'Sinclair' brand to Amstrad plc for the reported sum of £5 million - a bargain if you ask us!

So Amstrad's first machine to be launched under the Sinclair brand in 1986 was the Spectrum +2. From the outside it looked totally different, finally featuring a Spectrum with a proper keyboard and built-in cassette recorder. Apart from this the machine was identical to the Sinclair 128, but no doubt made Amstrad a fortune, retailing at a reduced £139-£149.

In 1987 Amstrad continued the rollout of new machines. The Spectrum +3 was similar to the +2 but featured a built-in 3" disk drive instead of a cassette recorder. This opened Spectrum games up to a whole new media, inviting fast loading times and easier saving of those huge typed-in programs. Several changes to the operating system were required - +3DOS featured several disk commands.

The Spectrum +3 remained in production until 1990.

However, not forgetting that in 1987 Amstrad also released a modified +2. The new +2A was basically a +3 but with built-in cassette recorder instead of the disk drive, hence the black colour instead of grey. And similarly with the +3 model the +2A proved incompatible with several older software titles.