The father and pioneer of cheap home microcomputers that we all like and know like ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum(+,16K/48K), Sinclair QL, ZX Spectrum 128, Z88 and (not computer but) a battery powered electric vehicle C5 dies at the age of 81.
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair was an English pioneer and inventor, most commonly known for his work for home electronics and microcomputers starting from PCBs, radios, calculators, even some portable TVs, also portable battery powered electric vehicle C5, but what he was most famous is to bring cheap microcomputers to homes.
And by cheap, he used all tricks one could starting with using half failed ram chips, keyboard was from metal plate over rubber sheet and with minimal designed plastic box, but that gave to many kids from 1980 to 1990 spark of imagination and smile on their face while programming or loading program from tapes or later from cheap box (also unreliable) Sinclair drive made from piece of endless tape.
From Sinclair Radionics\Science of Cambridge\Sinclair Research\Sinclair Vehicles came several products and even today there is a strong Sinclair user community.
But some kids learned programing, some just played games, some kids still today learn electronics from it due simple pcb and minimal list of components.
Still some programmers that started with Sinclair Home microcomputer can still brag “that they started programming and were writing functional programs that fit into 8K/16K/48K/128K machines”.
You can do too, join to retro-hardware community, just search for a little black box , blow dust from it and turn it on, it should still work and gave you prompt much faster that today computers 🙂
Thank you Sir Clive and RIP.