The Spectrum was the computer that opened up access to computing for a whole generation. Along with the Tandy series of machines, the Commodore Pets and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Micro they gave people access to aa technology that would revolutionise the world. Just as machines like the steam engine and the Spinning Jenny enabled the industrial revolution, the Spectrum and its ilk drove the information technology revolution. Every engineer of about my age had one of these machines and they taught us what the potential of software and hardware was. I think they are more important for learning than the PC's of today. To use a modern desktop PC you do not have to understand its principle of operation. This was not the case for these early machines. They demanded that you were curious.
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These were very clever on the inside but had one simple flaw on the outside that affected its very male customers: red lettering on grey keys foxed the ~ 4% of males with red-weak colour vision, reds appearing greyed out. Even the red on black would appear very dark, as did green on black for the other 4% of males with green-weak colour vision problems.