Hello and goodbye to all that

Abstract

‘It [a Sinclair ZX81] was about as small as a computer could be without being a pocket calculator. But, if you bought enough wobbly additional bits, including a tiny little printer which printed on rolls of aluminiumised paper, and you plugged it into the TV, and you worked very slowly, and prayed a lot, and copied everything out on a real typewriter afterwards, you could word‐process. If you didn't mind working only in capital letters …