The father of the home computer Clive Sinclair was a serial inventor and visionary whose output also included the prototype electric car. His other interests included poetry, marathon-running and poker. Jane Lewis reports
“RIP, Sir Sinclair. I loved that computer,” tweeted Elon
Musk. He wasn’t alone, says the Financial Times. The death, aged 81, of Sir Clive Sinclair, the entrepreneur behind the UK’s first mass-market home computer, brought tributes from “a host of engineers, entrepreneurs and tech billionaires” who claimed “their careers had been built on his inventions” – notably the affordable ZX Spectrum.
Coming a cropper
“One part visionary, one part dotty uncle and one part marketing genius”, for a few years in the 1980s Sinclair epitomised “the new hi-tech, go-ahead Britain”, says The Guardian. But his reputation “came a cropper” in 1985 with the launch of the C5, his prototype electric car. The three-wheeled, low-slung vehicle had a topspeed of 15mph and a battery that needed recharging every 20 miles.
Sinclair predicted annual sales of 100,000, but the “tricycle with a modified Hoover washing-machine engine” sank “under gales of derisive media laughter”. Several ensuing inventions – including an electric bicycle called a Zike and a tiny radio that could fit in the ear – did little to dispel his eccentric image. But his descent into mad-professor territory never deterred him, says The Independent on Sunday.
“If an idea is good enough, it’s going to appear pretty crazy to almost anyone,” he observed. “Either you do it yourself or it ain’t going to happen.” Born in 1940, in the London suburb of Richmond, Sinclair was “the son and grandson of engineers”, says The Guardian. His own enthusiasm was apparently sparked by an inventor character on the children’s radio programme Toytown .Bytheageof12,
“he had designed a one-person submarine out of a petrol tank”. Leaving school with A-Levels in maths and physics, Sinclair eschewed university to become a journalist on the trade paper Practical Wireless. His passion was “miniaturisation” and in
1962 he and his first wife, Ann, formed a company, Sinclair Radionics, making mailorder radio kits “using transistors bought cheaply... and dispatched to customers” from their home.
The combustible calculator
Sinclair’s drive for innovation saw him produce what he claimed to be the world’s first pocket calculator in 1973, says The Daily Telegraph. Its tendency to burst into flames nearly caused “an international incident”: when a Soviet diplomat’s device exploded in London, the Russians thought it was “an assassination attempt”. Sinclair’s own temperament was no less explosive. Reportedly “he only went into computing to annoy his ex-employee,
Chris Curry, who left Sinclair Research to develop home computers and founded the successful Acorn brand”. Indeed, Sinclair prided himself on never using computers.
Sinclair’s rivalry with Curry may be one reason he took his eye off the commercial ball. By the mid-1980s, the Spectrum had been eclipsed by its rival Amstrad and a new generation of IBM
PCs and clones. He consoled himself with other interests, including poetry, marathonrunning and poker. With an IQ of 159, he became chair of the British arm of Mensa. At 70, he married a former pole-dancer 36 years his junior. Sinclair long ago secured his legacy as “the father of the home computer”, says The Conversation. “But time is only now vindicating his other creations” – particularly “electrified personal transportation”. Even his so-called failures were prescient.
“If an idea is good enough, it’s going to appear crazy to almost anyone... either you do it yourself or it ain’t going to happen”