Check out the trailer for The Rubber-Keyed Wonder, an upcoming film from Anthony & Nicola Caulfield that tells the story of Clive Sinclair’s now legendary ZX Spectrum home computer that was first released in 1982. The world premiere of The Rubber-Keyed Wonder arrives on London’s BFI IMAX on October 3, 2024.
The Rubber-Keyed Wonder charts the development and creation of the ZX Spectrum from concept through to its first release, and the financial and reputational success it brought Clive Sinclair. It also examines the impact of subsequent versions of the computer and features a huge array of games that were developed on the Spectrum including: Jet Set Willy, Knightlore, Chuckie Egg, Ant Attack, Saboteur and many more.
The film is highly nostalgic and features rare archive material combined with new interviews with the Spectrum’s original designers, Sir Clive’s son and nephew, and some of the Spectrum's greatest game developers, all sharing their memories of the spectacular rise of the ZX Spectrum and its extraordinary inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair.
The Rubber-Keyed Wonder charts the development and creation of the ZX Spectrum from concept through to its first release, and the financial and reputational success it brought Clive Sinclair. It also examines the impact of subsequent versions of the computer and features a huge array of games that were developed on the Spectrum including: Jet Set Willy, Knightlore, Chuckie Egg, Ant Attack, Saboteur and many more.
The film is highly nostalgic and features rare archive material combined with new interviews with the Spectrum’s original designers, Sir Clive’s son and nephew, and some of the Spectrum's greatest game developers, all sharing their memories of the spectacular rise of the ZX Spectrum and its extraordinary inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair.
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TechTranscript
00:00My object is to find people's real needs, to develop products which have real benefit
00:28to people in whatever way, and to do that at a price that they can afford, to do for
00:3410p what anyone can do for a pound.
00:37Sir Clive Sinclair, you knew who he was, some great British inventor, but I don't think
00:42we sort of realised at the time the significance of what he was innovating in and what it would
00:47lead to.
00:48My father was always thinking about the next invention, new ideas, that was where his heart
00:54was.
00:55He thought it was something completely new that everybody would adopt, that's really
00:59what his goal was, to have a product that everybody wanted and everybody needed.
01:03Clive was an innovator, you need these people, they're the engines of industry, people that
01:08are prepared to take a risk, stick their neck out, and Clive Sinclair was a risk taker in
01:14the best way.
01:15I think of him as a boffin who understood what was important to people and how he could
01:22bring the future into their lives at a decent price.
01:27One of the strengths of Clive was that he was newsworthy, he was a personality, he was
01:31a bit of a maverick, people wanted to know what was he going to say, what was he going
01:35to do next.
01:46The spectrum was there at the time when it was affordable for parents to say, yep, we
01:50can stretch to that.
01:52The spectrum was ideal, you'd go to a shop, pick it up, you'd unbox it, you'd plug it
01:55in.
02:00I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
02:03The rainbow stripe on the bottom right, it's a thing of absolute beauty, and the Sinclair
02:07logo itself, the font, get out of town.
02:10It was just so successful.
02:17The amount of games that we used to get to was just incredible.
02:22The games played really made the spectrum the success it was.
02:29To me, it just made it possible to get into computing.
02:33That's the spectral experience.
02:36It's one of the few times that I dug my heels in and said, Clive, we're hiring her or I'm
02:41leaving.
02:42When Clive was targeting those early adopters, innovators, he was happiest.
02:47This was cheap, it was in everyone's houses, it was colour, beautiful.
02:51It gave the tools of production to the hands of millions.