The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Home computer pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair, 81
Home computing pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair has died at the age of 81, according to reports. His daughter Belinda Sinclair told the Guardian that the pocket calculator trailblazer and the brains behind the Spectrum home computers died at his home in London yesterday morning.
Sinclair launched the first affordable consumer computer in 1980, costing less than £100.
The multimillionaire entrepreneur’s company launched the ZX models in a decade where personal computer use boomed.
Timex Sinclair was a joint venture between the British company Sinclair Research and Timex Corporation in an effort to gain an entry into the rapidly growing early1980s home computer market in North America.
The choice of partnership was natural, as Timex was already the main contractor for manufacture of Sinclair’s ZX81 and ZX Spectrum computers at its Scottish plant in Dundee.
Sinclair became the first company in the world to sell more than a million computers, making his surname a household word.
Ms Sinclair told the BBC that her father had cancer for more than a decade and was still working on inventions up until last week “because that was what he loved doing”.
A man of diverse interests, Sinclair’s projects also saw him explore new technology in the worlds of television and cars. One illfated initiative was the Sinclair C5 vehicle, an electric tricycle heralded as the future of eco-friendly transport but which turned out to be an expensive flop.
Born in 1940, Sir Clive left school at the age of 17, becoming a technical journalist writing specialist manuals.
Aged 22, he formed Sinclair Radionics, his first company, making mail order radio kits, including the smallest transistor radio in the world.
Later in life he pioneered the pocket calculator and was dubbed an “electronics wizard”.
Other ventures included expansions into digital watches and the development of the world’s smallest television set.
It was with another company, Sinclair Research, that Sir Clive found his home computing successes as he faced off against international competition. The ZX 81 computer launched in 1981 sold half a million.