For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1870980
First pocket calculator

ZX81 and Spectrum

First pocket TV

First flat screen TV

New designs for electric wheelchair drives

SeaDoo

And many other things, some more or less successful. Really hard to understate this genius' impact upon modern life. At one point I was corresponding with him through our mutual membership of Mensa about flying car ideas he'd had.

I am so sorry that I never met him in person, and now cannot.

G
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By StratoTramp
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1870983
More of an Acorn man myself (read child) but yes seriously clever cookie. I think Acorn / Sinclair / RISC are all great examples of UK innovation punching above it's weight.

People still buy originals and replicas of the various spectrums today. Like the red display on the Sinclair Cambridge. Words never said before in history - it was a very stylish calculator. :lol: Guess a bit like apple these days with from as well as function considered. 8)
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1870995
Such a shame he never managed to get together with someone who could have helped with sales and marketing and production. I still have a Sinclair calculator which was bought by my father, it might get a battery in tribute :-)

A remarkable man. RIP
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1871001
I was mortified recently when I rediscovered my Sinclair Cambridge calculator which I bought in 1973 at the back of a cupboard .

When I decided to fire it up again I found I’d left the old batteries in for 40+ years.

The inside was mush …. :(

Edit Date.
Last edited by PeteSpencer on Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By Rob P
#1871020
I started computing with a Tandy TRS80 clone.

When Sinclair launched the Spectrum WITH COLOUR my computer envy knew no bounds.

From memory I soon bought one, followed by a Sinclair QL

Rob P
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By Paul_Sengupta
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#1871023
He didn't invent the pocket calculator, but he did bring out one which was a third of the price of the others on the market, and really shook things up. I still have my dad's one.

But it was the ZX81, back in 1981 when I was 11, which started my journey into computers and programming. I went on to get a computing AO (half an A level) just after my 13th birthday. The rest, they say, is history. I can't begin to thank him for that start I got on my life's journey. I expect there are many more like me.
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By Propwash
#1871027
I have always thought that Clive Sinclair was a good example of how this country tends to let itself down. It is a world leader in innovation but so often it is foreign countries and their corporations that exploit the inventions/discoveries because of an apparent lack of faith here that prevents proper backing and funding.

If only we could properly harness the home-grown talent which makes us so productive in ideas. History is littered with examples of UK creativity that the world now thinks was dreamt up elsewhere because that is where it was properly exploited. A great shame but it will probably be the fate of the next Clive Sinclair too. :(

RIP.

PW
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By TrickyWoo
#1871081
ZX81 for me at age 11. (ZX80 before that but with FORTRAN so unsurprisingly nobody could understand enough to make it work). Working in cyber / InfoSec now after a career which owes at least something to the good Sir C. Today's Times and Telegraph had fun with obit euphemisms , 'he had an easy conscience' and 'an energetic private life...conducted in his flat overlooking Trafalgar Square'. I like the image of the conducting!

IIRC the problem wasn't only marketing and business savvy - quality control was often shocking

Edited to add...he apparently hated that his 'pooters were used for games. I remember Jet Set Willy in 82. Home taping meant one buyer per about 20 kids in the playground playing off Winfield C15 taped copies. JSW came with a huuuuge inlay card, in colour, requiring a code put in each time the game was fired up, The entropy of the algorithm essentially being the inability for the whole card to be copied because there were no colour domestic printers*. They didn't figure on a battalion of snotty kids with pens and A4 copying it all out in large print with B for Blue etc and printing it off in B&W. Free Willy for all :-)

*certainly not the thermal ink and foil paper firehazard that was the Sinclair home printer. Shocking bit of kit!
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By classgee
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1871084
Soldered my ZX81 together from a kit, using a monster soldering iron borrowed from a relative. Big step up from my previous veroboard experience. Some of the soldering wasn't pretty, and the stress level was high as the £49.99 price was mighty significant for the younger me.

Brilliant first step into computing. Thanks Uncle Clive, RIP.