hey! If you have fond memories playing Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy You will love it on family TV Rubber Wrench Miracle. It’s a new documentary about the birth, life, death and rebirth of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum that premieres today. The crowdfunded the film is a fascinating look at an iconic and legendary artifact of computing history with many high-profile contributors. Two thumbs up! Go watch the movie now, you don’t need to continue reading after this point, I hope you have a lot of fun!
If you’re a die-hard fan, no need to read on!
(I hope they’re gone now.)
It happened while watching Rubber Wrench Miracle I’ve come to realize that the current crop of pop culture documentaries going around annoys me. A documentary should be an authored essay that offers a point of view, an argument, or at least educates you about a topic. They’re usually deeply one-sided, but normally there’s a “hey, isn’t it? neat?” I found documentaries like this lacking because they don’t have much else to say. Which is heartbreaking when the film’s subject matter isn’t as neat and more interesting as it is here.
If you are not familiar, Sir Clive Sinclair was a British inventor whose work greatly influenced the electronics industry. He developed ultra-small transistor radios, created the pocket calculator, the digital watch, and the portable television. His interest in green transportation saw him build a single-driver electric car decades before the e-scooter came along. But all of this is a nod to its range of affordable home computers, the most notable of which is the Spectrum.
UK Sinclair broke up and he made it his life’s mission to make products affordable enough for everyone to buy. Its low-cost, mass-market products were huge hits and deeply undercut the competition, especially in home computers. Unfortunately, the low price also meant that its equipment was poorly made, unreliable, and severely underpowered.
But accessibility and limitations fueled a creative boom credited with the creation of the UK computer games industry. The heads of several major British studios cut their teeth developing and selling games for the ZX Spectrum. The secondary effects of Sinclair’s work had a more profound effect on the technology industry more broadly. Sinclair’s protege left rival Chris Curry to found Acorn Computers, from which he founded ARM. The founder of what would become Rockstar North worked on the Sinclair production line in Dundee.
Sinclair was also reportedly difficult to work with, with a violent temper and a rather large ego. He was pretty bad at business, and his refusal to listen to others cost him both his companies, once in a fight with the UK’s National Enterprise Council in 1976 and again in 1985. unfinished products to keep cash flowing to his company at the expense of his reputation.
The reason I bring all of these up is because each one is either given the shortest possible attention or eliminated entirely. Rubber Wrench Miracle It’s better to focus on the Specter itself and its influence, erasing the more interesting story around it. But if you know anything about the area and how connected the car and its unique builder are, these omissions hurt the story.
But I understand why: This isn’t a documentary that aspires to be a serious examination of a very interesting period in computing history. Instead, it’s a product of the fan-nostalgia industrial complex, where the deepest interpretations are suppressed in favor of misty-eyed memories. That’s not to say it’s dishonest; Even the Spectrum’s most ardent fans are happy to admit that the machine sucks on several fundamental levels. Even Sinclair people joke that they know they’re selling junk that doesn’t work very often, but the fans who buy it love it anyway.
The film can’t help but be informative by exploring the wider ecosystem cultivated around Spectre. It has its origins, the games that made it famous, and the culture it spawned, from independent computer shops to the cottage industry of magazines. Along with this, there are also time-consuming montages of footage from Spectrum games that slow down the film in favor of squeezing the audience’s ‘member berries’.
That’s not to say that The Rubber Keyed Wonder is a waste of time, especially given the paucity of material on the subject*. There are a lot of things I’m learning about for the first time, and I found some games that I never encountered as a kid to be seriously impressive. Unfortunately, you’ll probably leave this movie wanting some answers to your questions.
* Probably the law I should mention Micro MenA BBC comedy satirizing the feud between Sinclair and Curry. Both men went on the record to deny any factual inaccuracies with Curry the film was “very unfair” to Clive Sinclair. Still, it’s a pretty fun watch as long as you accept that it’s mostly fictional. If you look hard enough, you can probably find it online for free.
