On This Day - 27th January

On 27 January 1983, the Oric-1 was officially launched at Coworth Park near Ascot. Developed by Tangerine Computer Systems and marketed by Oric Products International, the Oric-1 entered an increasingly competitive British home-computer market dominated by machines such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore VIC-20 and Acorn BBC Micro. The Oric was deliberately positioned as a serious rival to the Spectrum, offering colour graphics, sound and a full-stroke keyboard while competing at a similar price.

Available in 16K and 48K versions, the Oric-1 was based around a 1 MHz MOS 6502A processor and included features intended to make it an attractive alternative to Sinclair's machine. Its built-in sound hardware, printer interface and more conventional BASIC were among its selling points. The Oric-1 went on to become one of the better-known British home computers of the early 1980s, although it ultimately failed to match the commercial success of the ZX Spectrum.

Your Spectrum magazine was relaunched as Your Sinclair with its January 1986 issue. The magazine had originally launched in January 1984 as Your Spectrum and had become a monthly publication later that year. The change of name reflected plans to broaden its coverage to include the Sinclair QL and future Sinclair computers, although the magazine continued to concentrate heavily on the ZX Spectrum. The first Your Sinclair issue was numbered 1, beginning a new numbering sequence separate from the 21 issues of Your Spectrum.