- So, before I dive in to this, a quick history lesson for those of you that aren't fully up to speed on your rare 80's vintage 8 bit computers. In the beginning, there was Clive Sinclair, and he invented the Sinclair ZX80. From the ZX80, the ZX81 and indeed home computing was born. From the ZX81 came the ZX Spectrum. Ok, so Clive didn't invent these single handed. He had a team working for him, which included Steven Vickers and Richard Altwasser. Somewhere between the initial design of the ZX Spectrum and its launch, Vickers and Altwasser thought there was a better way to do things, and left to set up their own computer company.
Jupiter Cantab was formed in 1982, and Vickers and Altwasser developed the Jupiter ACE. This little computer was a weird mix of ZX80 (vacuum formed white case), ZX81 (black & white low res graphics, 3k memory) and ZX Spectrum (rubber keyboard, small speaker). The one fundamental difference, however, was that it used FORTH instead of BASIC as it's operating system. FORTH was much more efficient than BASIC, and would revolutionise the home computer market... Although history tells us it didn't. Cantab went bust after 18 months and was bought by Boldfield Computing, who went on to sell off the remaining hardware in 1985. Approximately 8000 units were manufactured. When I was offered an original unpopulated Jupiter ACE by John Fletcher, it was too good to turn down... - Yesterday this tweet appeared on my Twitter timeline [embedTweet url="538666941335236610"] Now, being the geeky retro Sinclair fanboy I am, I read it, understood it, and retweeted it. Obviously.
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