Editing Sinclair BASIC (section)

==History==
[[Clive Sinclair]] initially met with John Grant, the owner of Nine Tiles, in April 1979 to discuss a BASIC for Sinclair's new computer concept.{{sfn|Adamson|Kennedy|p=63}} Sinclair was inspired to make a new machine after watching his son enjoy their [[TRS-80]], but that machine's £500 price tag appeared to be a serious limit on its popularity. He wanted a new kit that would expand on their previous [[MK14]] and feature a built-in BASIC at the target price of £79.95. To meet this price point, the machine would ship with only 1&nbsp;KB of RAM and 4&nbsp;KB of ROM. Grant suggested using the [[Forth (programming language)|Forth]] language instead, but the budget precluded this. Grant wrote the BASIC interpreter between June and July 1979, but the code initially came in at 5&nbsp;KB and he spent the next month trimming it down. It was initially an incomplete implementation of the 1978 [[American National Standards Institute]] (ANSI) [[Minimal BASIC]] standard with integer arithmetic only, termed '''4K BASIC'''.{{sfn|Adamson|Kennedy|1986|p=64}}

Even before the ZX80 was introduced in February 1980, the constant downward price-pressure in the industry was allowing the already inexpensive design to be further reduced in complexity and cost. In particular, many of the separate circuits in the ZX80 were re-implemented in a single [[uncommitted logic array]] from [[Ferranti]], which allowed the price to be reduced to only £49.95 while increasing the size of the ROM to 8&nbsp;KB. This work was assigned to [[Steve Vickers (computer scientist)|Steve Vickers]], who joined Nine Tiles in January 1980. Whilst Grant worked on the code interfacing with hardware, Vickers used the larger space to introduce floating-point arithmetic and a suite of [[trigonometry|trig]] functions, which were expected of any BASIC from that era, producing '''8K BASIC'''.{{sfn|Adamson|Kennedy|1986|p=70}} The initial version did not support the [[ZX Printer]] and had a bug in its [[square root]] function. Nine Tiles provided a new version to address these, but Sinclair was slow to include the new version in the ROMs. The new ROMs were eventually offered to owners of the earlier ZX80 as well.<ref name=8Kupgrade>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fruitcake.plus.com/Sinclair/ZX80/ROMUpgrade/ZX80_ROMUpgrade.htm|title=ZX80 – 8K BASIC ROM Upgrade|website=www.fruitcake.plus.com}}</ref>

When Sinclair lost the contest to build the [[BBC Computer]], he moved ahead with plans to produce a low-cost colour-capable machine that emerged as the [[ZX Spectrum]] of April 1982. ROM space would once again be increased, this time to 16&nbsp;KB. In keeping with his philosophy of making systems for the lowest possible expenditure, Sinclair wanted the absolute minimum changes to the existing 8K BASIC. Although Nine Tiles felt that something much better would be needed for the new machine, the schedule would not allow it, and yet another expansion of the original code was produced. Due to the RAM also being increased, to 48&nbsp;KB, this version was known as 48K BASIC and eventually '''48 BASIC''' with the introduction of the ZX Spectrum 128 at which time the 16&nbsp;KB Spectrum was no longer sold and most existing ones in use had been upgraded to 48&nbsp;KB.<ref name="worldofspectrum.org" /><ref name=":0" /> The new version was available near the end of 1981, but it was "depressingly slow" and "snail like". Additionally, as no prototypes were available until the end of the year, it lacked support for the new line of peripherals Sinclair was planning.<ref name=reg>{{cite magazine |first=Tony |last=Smith |title=Happy 30th Birthday, Sinclair ZX Spectrum |date=23 April 2012 |magazine=The Register |url=https://www.theregister.com/2012/04/23/retro_week_sinclair_zx_spectrum_at_30?page=2}}</ref>

In February 1982, Nine Tiles began to have disagreements with Sinclair over owed royalties for the various manuals that Nine Tiles had produced. Around the same time, Vickers and his Sinclair counterpart, Richard Altwasser, left their respective companies to start the [[Jupiter Ace]] project.{{sfn|Adamson|Kennedy|1986|p=88}} When the Spectrum was launched the ROM was still not complete, and although Nine Tiles continued working on it until April 1982, by that point 75,000 Spectrums had already been sold and the project was cancelled. The missing functionality was later added by additional code in the [[ZX Interface 1]]. After Nine Tiles and Sinclair went their own ways, several new versions of 48 BASIC were created.

In 1983, as part of introducing the Spectrum to the US market as the TS2068, [[Timex Sinclair|Timex]] modified it as '''T/S 2000 BASIC'''. The new version was incapable of running many Spectrum programs due to the memory location of machine's functions moving. A similar, but somewhat more compatible version, was introduced as part of the Spanish Spectrum 128 of 1985, '''128 BASIC'''.<ref name=":0" />

Amstrad purchased Sinclair Research in 1986. As Sinclair had never owned the copyright to the language, Amstrad had to arrange a new license with Nine Tiles. Several other versions also appeared in this period as various extensions and [[List of ZX Spectrum clones|clones]] of the Spectrum were introduced. These included '''+3 BASIC''', '''BASIC64''' and '''Timex Extended Basic'''.<ref name=":0" /><ref name="worldofspectrum.org" /> 

As of 2015, interpreters exist for modern [[operating system]]s,<ref>{{Citation |last=Dunn |first=Paul |title=SpecBAS |date=2022-12-07 |url=https://github.com/ZXDunny/SpecBAS |access-date=2022-12-12}}</ref> and older systems,<ref>{{Cite web |title=CSDb |url=https://csdb.dk/search/?seinsel=releases&search=spectrum+emulator&all=1 |access-date=2022-12-12 |website=Commodore 64 Scene Database}}</ref> that allow Sinclair Basic to be used easily.