ZX Spectrum Plus User Guide
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Playground Equipment Catalogue, 1962
'Edison's Anti-Gravitation Underclothing', 1879
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Transporting a Nuclear Obelisk, 1957
'Time of decision' US army recruitment comic, 1963
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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.