ZX Spectrum Plus User Guide
If you like this, check out:
Photobooth animations
USB Typewriters
If There Had Always Been An Internet
Alternative Ghostbusters
Pre-Communist Russia Postcards
In event of Moon Disaster
Playing Cards by Vladislav Erko
Transporting a Nuclear Obelisk, 1957
Ikea Catalogue, 1965
Bell Labs, 1960s
'Travel Back In Time With Yahoo! Maps'
IBM Sage Computer, 1960
'What is the Internet Anyway?', NBC Today, January 1994
The Mundaneum, 1910
The Autographic Kodak Camera, 1914-1932
Wonder Woman Amazon Baby Sitter, 1957
Children's Pockets, Sears Catalogue, 1981
"Let's Make Puppets", 1972
Jack & Mary's Jell-O cook book, 1937
Broadway Theatre brochure for "The Merchant of Venice", 1903
Sears Camera Catalogue, 1961
Love the fact that a Nassi Sheidermann diagram appears several times through out the manual. Has a real programmers feel about it. You could almost image that the successful installation of one of these would make a person feel intelligent.
I remember getting sent by the bloke in WHSmith to go and steal the keys off the one in John Menzies to mend his display model!
My dad bought one of these when I was four and NOBODY had a computer. He was up until 4am playing hungry horace (pre-pac man). He designed a game for me to learn how to spell and mum was like “no other children are going to learn how to read and write on a computer – they’re too expensive and the tapes take ten minutes to load!” Dad would say “computers are the future and Ange needs to know how to use them to get a job in the future” Ah, 1985…
I love that these old computer user’s manual include information about how they work. It’s a comforting deviation from the modern practice of hiding the PCs internals from the user at all costs.
I still have the books for the original spectrum as i had one in 1982 which be bought direct from sinclair.. one with grey keys instead of the later ones with blueish keys…
This reminds me of my ZX-81, a precursor (I believe) to the Spectrum. I think I got it in the summer of 1982. I used it for a year and a half until I got my Commodore 64 for Christmas in 1983.