Timex/Sinclair 1000 (1982)

Invented by British gadget king Clive Sinclair and marketed in the United States by Timex (which knew a thing or two about affordable gizmos), this everyman's computer sold for a rock-bottom $100. The slab-shaped T/S 1000 was cheap in every sense of the word--it packed a minuscule 1KB of RAM and had a barely usable flat keyboard. Even so, it was a blockbuster, briefly: Timex shipped 600,000 of them, many more were sold in other countries, and clones even appeared. For an exhaustive look at the whole phenomenon, consult the Timex Sinclair Showcase.