My father handed me a ZX Spectrum in 1983, and I have been chasing that feeling ever since.
Sinclair's ZX Spectrum, launched in 1982 for under £175, put a colour computer into ordinary British homes. Programs loaded from cassette tape. That year India launched INSAT-1B, extending satellite communications and broadcasting across the country.
In 1983 my father gave me a ZX Spectrum. Forty-odd keys under rubber, a handful of colours, and a cassette deck that loaded a program in about the time it takes to lose your patience. You typed, you waited, you watched the border stripes flicker, and sometimes after four minutes it failed and you started again.
I did not know it was a cheap machine. Sinclair had built it down to a price, under two hundred pounds, so that ordinary families could own a computer for the first time. To me it was infinite. Everything I have believed about technology since starts in that room: a machine in the hands of a curious kid is not a product, it is a door.
The waiting taught me patience. The moment it finally loaded taught me obsession. I have never really left that loop.
FILL: the first thing you remember making, or breaking, on it.