On This Day - 9th December

The millionth ZX Spectrum rolls off the production line at the Timex factory in Dundee, marking a remarkable milestone for Sinclair Research.

The ZX Spectrum had been launched just 20 months earlier, in April 1982. Its combination of colour graphics, a Z80 processor, up to 48K of RAM and a very low price had made it enormously popular, with sales averaging around 50,000 machines a month by the end of 1983.

To celebrate the achievement, a unique white ZX Spectrum was produced specially for Sir Clive Sinclair. Sinclair visited the Dundee factory in December 1983 to receive the commemorative machine, which was presented to mark the production of one million Spectrums.

Reaching one million machines in such a short period demonstrated the extraordinary growth of the British home-computer market and established the ZX Spectrum as one of the country's most successful personal computers.

The milestone also came at a particularly important point in the Spectrum's history. By the end of 1983, a large software industry had developed around the machine, with hundreds of commercial programs being produced and the Spectrum becoming an increasingly important platform for British computer games.

In December 1990, Amstrad discontinued production of the ZX Spectrum +3, bringing the production run of its disk-based Spectrum to an end after just over three years. The +3 had been introduced in 1987 as the most advanced member of the Spectrum family, combining 128K of RAM with a built-in 3-inch floppy disk drive and support for CP/M.

The decision to discontinue the +3 was reportedly connected with Amstrad's relaunch of its own CPC range. The Spectrum +3 was effectively competing within Amstrad's own home-computer product line, while the simpler +2B was allowed to remain in production because it was considered less of a direct competitor to the CPC machines.

The end of +3 production did not immediately mean the end of the ZX Spectrum. Other Amstrad Spectrum models continued to be produced, with the +2B remaining available until 1992. Nevertheless, the discontinuation of the +3 marked the end of the final disk-based Spectrum model and the beginning of the final chapter of the Spectrum's commercial life.