Code Like It's 198x

Sinclair Programs

A magazine that was mostly listings

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ECC Publications' companion to Sinclair User ran 35 issues from May 1982 to September 1985. It began with forty type-in programs for the ZX80 and ZX81, went monthly in 1983, passed to EMAP in 1984 and closed because, its editors said, professional and budget software had made a listings magazine unnecessary.

The first program in the first issue of Sinclair Programs was Chasvaders, a version of Space Invaders by 15-year-old Charles King-Cox of Appleby. It ran on a ZX80 with 1K of memory and the old ROM, and it could not be won: shoot all five invaders and five more arrived. The staff’s best score in the office was 3,570, and readers were invited to beat it. That set the pattern for the next three and a half years. Sinclair Programs was a magazine of programs to type in, most of them sent in by readers, and it paid £10 for each one it printed.

Fast facts

  • Published: May 1982 to September 1985, 35 issues: six bi-monthly issues, then monthly from May 1983.
  • Publisher: ECC Publications, Islington, London, the publisher of Sinclair User; EMAP from September 1984.
  • Editors: Nigel Clark, from the first issue (as managing editor from late 1983); Rebecca Ferguson, who had started as its program reviewer, from April 1984 to the end.
  • Machines: the ZX80 and ZX81 at first, then the ZX Spectrum; ZX81 listings ran almost to the end.
  • Payment: £10 for each program printed; by 1985, £25 for a listing and £10 for one in the beginners’ section.

Forty programs an issue

ECC launched Sinclair User in April 1982 and Sinclair Programs a month later, dated May/June 1982. The first issue had about forty listings, from Lunar Lander, Sink the Bismarck and Star Gates to a quadratic-equation solver, an Ohm’s law calculator, a cricket-averages program and a string sort for the ZX80. Its masthead made the same point as Sinclair User’s: the magazine was “not in anyway connected with Sinclair Research Ltd”. Contributors were asked to send their programs “preferably on cassette”.

ECC sold it as part of a family. In November 1982 its advertisement in Sinclair User described Sinclair Programs as the companion magazine that had become “an overnight success with 40 NEW programs, ready for you to key, in every issue”, and offered six issues for £6.60. A third title, Sinclair Projects, came out in the months between. A year after launch, in May 1983, Sinclair Programs went monthly.

Its contents followed the machines. The Spectrum reached its first buyers that summer, and Spectrum listings took over the magazine’s pages, but the ZX81 never quite left: the August 1985 issue still printed Alien Lander, “written for the 16K ZX-81” by a reader from Dursley, with a machine-code scroll to make it fast. By then the magazine had a beginners’ section, a programming course, software reviews, a chart, readers’ letters and game maps, and in May 1985 it offered its readers a computer holiday.

Under EMAP

In September 1984 East Midland Allied Press bought ECC’s Sinclair titles. Sinclair Programs changed its masthead the same month, from ECC Publications to EMAP Business and Computer Publications, and soon moved to EMAP’s offices at Priory Court in Farringdon Lane, London.

Its third-birthday issue, in May 1985, looked back over the trade it had grown up with. The feature dated companies by their age: Artic, “in business since the summer of 1980”; Mikro-Gen, trading from November 1981 “through their own shop”; Software Farm, still selling ZX81 games when everyone else had moved to the Spectrum; Automata, whose software label “began operating in November 1982”; and the newcomers, among them Mastertronic, which “began in April 1984” and had already released sixty-two games, and Creative Sparks, “Thorn EMI’s contender in the software publishing market. Started in April 1984.” It also printed Andrew Hewson’s account of how his company began, over tea at a Wimpy bar in Stratford-upon-Avon in the summer of 1980, when his boss praised the new ZX80: “Look at its price, its a winner.”

The last issue

The September 1985 issue was the last. Its editorial looked back to the ZX80 and ZX81, “machines with low resolution graphics and no sound”, and to the “crying need for software” that had brought the magazine into being. “As the emphasis in computing has shifted from amateur to professional, from 81 to Spectrum, from Basic to machine code”, it said, the magazine had stayed “mainly a listings magazine”. With good professional software and budget ranges “aimed at the impoverished computer owner”, there was “no longer a need for such a magazine”. It did not merge with another title. Readers were pointed to Sinclair User, “next month”, and the same issue carried an advertisement for it.

Sources

  • Sinclair Programs issue 1, May/June 1982: masthead (Nigel Clark, editor; ECC Publications; “not in anyway connected with Sinclair Research Ltd”; £10 a program; “preferably on cassette”), contents, and Chasvaders.
  • Sinclair User issue 2, May 1982: advertisers’ index listing Sinclair Programs on p. 52.
  • Sinclair User issue 8, November 1982: ECC subscription advertisement for Sinclair User, Sinclair Programs and Sinclair Projects (“an overnight success with 40 NEW programs”; six issues £6.60).
  • Sinclair Programs mastheads: issue 8, June 1983 (Rebecca Ferguson, program reviews); issue 12, October 1983 (Nigel Clark, managing editor); issue 18, April 1984 (Rebecca Ferguson, editor); issue 22, August 1984 (ECC Publications); issue 23, September 1984 (EMAP Business and Computer Publications); issue 28, February 1985 (Priory Court, Farringdon Lane; £25 and £10 payments).
  • Sinclair User issue 30, September 1984: news, “Same paper, new owners”, on EMAP’s purchase of ECC’s Sinclair titles.
  • Sinclair Programs issue 31, May 1985: editorial (“The first issue of Sinclair Programs went on sale in May 1982”; monthly “a year later”; the computer holiday) and the third-birthday feature on the software houses and Hewson Consultants.
  • Sinclair Programs issue 34, August 1985: Alien Lander for the 16K ZX81.
  • Sinclair Programs issue 35, September 1985: closing editorial and Sinclair User advertisement.

See also

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