A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Commodore
January 1982
VIC-20 Colour Computer - What VIC-20 Can Do For You
This nice gate-fold sales material was made for the VIC-20 a few months after its UK launch. It's full of archetypal 80s people looking at screens, and the blurb contains informa...

Tatung
September 1984
A Complete Colour Micro With No Hidden Extras for Around £499
Designed entirely by Tatung UK, an offshoot of Taiwan's largest company, the Einstein was aimed vaguely at the business market, but with a Zilog Z80A processor could also emulate ...

Torch
September 1984
From only £764 the new Torch Graduate will upgrade your BBC Model B to a powerful 16 bit busiess computer
Here's something of a curiosity from the days when it was quite common to hybridise computers, like the Commodore C128 with its own native mode, a 6510/6502 equivalent for C64 com...

Acorn
September 1984
The Electron has added even more strings to its bow
Here is another advert for the Acorn Electron, or rather software from Acornsoft for the Electron, featuring a dude rather self-consciously dressed up as Cupid. The Electron, la...

Acorn
September 1984
Hey Prestel. A new dimension for the BBC Micro
Here's another advert that shows that the world of 'on-line' was alive and well long before the advent of the Internet. Prestel was a UK electronic information system set up by ...

Commodore
November 1984
Commodore 64: Are you only using 1/10th of your brain?
Another UK advert for the Commodore 64, extoling the virtues of more software and peripherals like printers, joysticks and colour monitors. Somewhat disingensouly, it suggests t...

Sinclair
1984
Mentathlete - the Sinclair ZX Spectrum
This is a slightly abstract advert for the ZX Spectrum, which appeared on the back of a home computer course. It shows an all-metal dude, like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, reaching...

Acorn
March 1980
"The perfect lead.. Acorn Microcomputer System 1"
Acorn's "System 1" - formerly known just as the Acorn Microcomputer - was launched in March 1979 and appears here in an early-1980 advert selling for £75 in kit form (or about £47...

Commodore
March 1984
"When You Have An Enormous Memory, There's No End To The Things You Can Do"
From the time when 64K was still quite a lot of memory for a home computer, comes this advert from Commodore featuring a cute baby elephant with a whole pile of software piled on ...

Tandy/Radio Shack
October 1978
TRS-80 - The biggest name in little computers. Complete and ready to go NOW!
It's another advert for one of the "1977 Trinity" - the Z80-based Tandy TRS-80. A year after its launch, the Level-II system had appeared, with an expanded BASIC in ROM, now at ...

Sinclair
September 1978
MK14 - the only low-cost keyboard-addressable microprocessor!
What would become the home-computing part of the Sinclair empire was at this time operating under the moniker of Science of Cambridge, whilst the Sinclair name itself was still at...

Sinclair
June 1978
MK14 - the only low-cost keyboard-addressable microcomputer!
This is the second-earliest reference in this collection - and the first to mention an actual computer - to the company that would become Sinclair, which did so much to kick-start...

Nascom/Lucas
June 1978
Nascom 1 Microprocessor Z80 kit
Nascom, the computer company which was eventually acquired by car-parts maker Lucas was, for a while, the UK's biggest supplier of computer kits. It was established by Lynx Elec...

Sinclair
June 1978
The new Sinclair DM235 digital multimeter. 3.5 digits. Under £50!
Sinclair Radionics, the company that was based in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, was in some financial difficulties during the mid 70s, and was part-nationalised by the National Enterp...

SWTPC
November 1977
SWTPC announces first dual minifloppy kit under $1,000
South West Technical Products Corp was a company that started out producing project kits, but here is offering a complete Motorola 6800-based system with 4K memory and floppy disk...