Spectravideo

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Spectravideo Logo.svg

The US company Spectra-Video, Inc. with its international branch Spectravideo International Ltd. was a maker of joysticks , video games, and home computers . The QuickShot , the first ergonomically designed joystick in video game history and one of the first with an auto-fire function, hence the name , achieved greater popularity . The Spectravideo SV-318 and SV-328 home computers are also of particular relevance to the history of technology, as they are considered direct forerunners and thus pioneers of the MSX standard.

history

QuickShot I joystick from 1982

The company was founded in 1981 in the USA under the name "Spectravision". The founders were two Swiss watch manufacturers Harry Fox and Oscar Jutzeler , who emigrated to North America in the 1950s . The company initially sold games for the Atari 2600 , Colecovision and Commodore VC 20 systems . In 1982 the company was renamed "SpectraVideo" due to a name conflict with a television system of the same name for hotels. Also that year on November 9th, the first variant of the QuickShot was patented under US patent number 271220. This was one of the first joysticks with an autofire function.

In January 1983 two home computer systems were presented in Las Vegas at the CES : an extension for the Atari 2600 CompuMate and Spectravideo SV-318 . The Spectravideo SV-328 followed at the summer CES in Chicago that same year . SV-318 and SV-328 were precursors to the MSX standard. The SV-328 in particular gave the ASCII President Kazuhiko Nishi the idea of ​​creating a home computer standard based on this home computer.

In addition, the SpectraVideo QuickShot SVI-2000 Robot Arm was launched. B. connected to a Commodore 64 (the user port) or stand alone could be controlled with two joysticks.

Spectravideo SV-318 - The forerunner of the MSX standard.

The company called itself SpectraVideo International in 1984 and launched the first full-fledged MSX computer ( Spectravideo SVI-728 ) under this label and sold the computer on the North American , European and Australian continents , as well as in South Africa and Israel . They were particularly successful in Europe. In contrast, sales in America were modest. Therefore, in 1985 the main shareholder Bondwell moved the company's headquarters to Hong Kong and closed all departments in the USA.

In 1985 the MSX SVI-738 X'Press and in 1986 the PC-compatible MSX-2 SVI-838 XPress'16 were produced. In 1986 the company finally left the MSX group and produced IBM-compatible PCs ( Spectravideo SVI-256 and SVI-640FH / FF ). The company was liquidated in the following years and the name was sold to the British company Ash & Newman (now Logic3).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Center for Computing History: Quickshot 1 joystick . Retrieved January 8, 2016.
  2. a b c d Roger's Spectravideo page, Spectravideo timeline 1981-1988 . Retrieved May 2, 2010.

Web links

Commons : Spectravideo MSX computers  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Spectravideo joysticks  - collection of images, videos and audio files