Sinclair × SodaStream

Announced October 14, 1982, six months after the ZX Spectrum, the FZ1 grew out of Clive Sinclair's belief that his design studio could improve anything in a British kitchen. SodaStream supplied the gas valve, the exchange cylinder and the bottle threads unchanged. Rick Dickinson was given everything else and told it had to retail under forty pounds.

Dickinson kept the tower, because the cylinder dictates it. He cut a raked wedge into the top so that, seen from the side, the machine reads as a Spectrum stood on end. The Spectrum's aluminium faceplate went onto the wedge, and SodaStream's steel gas plunger was capped with an enlarged Spectrum key in blue-grey rubber. SodaStream insisted on keeping its hinged safety cradle for the glass bottle. Dickinson agreed on condition it was black, and lost the argument over the knob, which stayed SodaStream red.

The clever part is a single 4017 CMOS decade counter running off a PP3 battery. A microswitch under the plunger advances one red LED per press, and only one is lit at a time. The circuit is powered only while the cradle is closed, so opening it resets the count and saves the battery. Under the lights, in the green keyword lettering the Spectrum uses for PRINT and GOTO, the five positions read FLAT, SODA, LIVELY and STRONG. The fifth is printed in red and says only '!'.

Sinclair User reviewed the FZ1 in its December issue, between a 16K RAM pack and a joystick interface, and called it the only Sinclair product that worked first time out of the box. The key caps came from the same rubber supplier as the Spectrum keyboard mat. When keyboard demand spiked that Christmas, FZ1 orders shipped with the familiar note: please allow 28 days for delivery.