Father of the home PC, Sir Clive Sinclair, dies aged 81
COMPUTER pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair has died at the age of 81.
Widely credited with popularising the home PC and helping to launch the British video games industry, he passed away at his London home yesterday after a ‘long illness’, his daughter said.
He was perhaps best known for his ZX Spectrum microcomputer but he also invented the pocket calculator and a string of other gadgets – not all of which were a success.
His home computer saw games such as Atic Atac, Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner became huge hits and inspired programmers worldwide.
Edgar Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead, led tributes last night tweeting: ‘For someone whose first glimpses of a brave new world were the terrifying graphics of 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, I’d like to salute Sir Clive Sinclair.
‘He made 21st Century dreams feel possible.
Will bash away on the rubber keys of a Spectrum in your honour. RIP.’
Sir Clive’s daughter, Belinda, 57, said: ‘He was a rather amazing person, so clever and always interested in everything.
‘It was the ideas, the challenge, he found exciting. He’d come up with an idea and say, “There’s no point in asking if someone wants it, because they can’t imagine it.”’ After leaving school at 17, he launched his own company, and his ZX80 and ZX81 computers made a profit of £14million in three years.
He was awarded a knighthood in 1983 but sold his business to rival Amstrad in 1986 after the flop of his Sinclair C5 – a battery-powered vehicle – in 1985.
Famously, he did not make use of his own inventions and claimed in interviews he did not use email or the internet.
He also said he did not even own a computer.