ZX Spectrum
This computer from the 1980s changed computing by allowing any-one to buy a computer and start learning how they can be used. Many of our students arriving at York had had one of these and got them interested in computers.
This machines were developed by Clive Sinclair, a very successful business man and electronics/computer engineer.
Jim Austin remembers one student who had designed a popular computer game as a school boy on one of these machines. He came to do computer science to learn how to use computers more effectively, despite being a successful and very profitable programmer already.