When I was about 10 years old, my maths teacher at school brought his Sinclair ZX80 into the classroom at the end of the Summer term to show his pupils. He'd written a couple of Math quiz programs that he showed us, and for 99% of the students that was enough - it was nice curiosity and diversion and the end of the school year. I however was fascinated by this little white lump of plastic.

When I came back to school after the summer holiday, everything had changed in that classroom.

Around the edge of room were about eight brand spanking new ZX81s with 16k RAM packs. They were all connected to a single tape deck in the corner of the room, into which our teacher could insert a cassette with the latest Maths program he'd written. All the pupils would be instructed to type LOAD "" and he'd press play on the tape deck - early networking!

From there I got my own first machine (a 16k ZX Spectrum) but I've never forgotten that initial contact.