FINAL LOG OUT FOR HOME COMPUTER LEGEND SIR CLIVE SINCLAIR
Electronics wizard Sir Clive Sinclair died on Thursday 16th September 2021, aged 81, after a ten year battle with cancer.
He was an inventor extraordinaire, starting with the pocket calculator, and then bringing computers to the masses with his ZX Spectrum. This affordable home computer was promoted to schools everywhere and was loved by Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk.
Born in Richmond Surrey, he left school at 17, working as a technical journalist to fund his founding of Sinclair Radionics. In the early 1970’s he designed a series of pocket calculators and in 1982, his first home computer ZX81. It made him a rich man, earning £14 million in one year. His competitor Lord Alan Sugar paid tribute to his friend for kickstarting consumer electronics in the UK.
He became a household name, and in 1983 was knighted by the Queen. Sadly his invention of the quirky Sinclair C5 electric trike failed, mainly due to lack of market research. Sales flopped, and the company, Sinclair Vehicles, went bankrupt. Sir Clive Sinclair sold Sinclair Computers to Alan Sugar’s Amstrad for £5 million.
An individual throughout his life, he was not a man to use his own inventions, he preferred to carry a slide rule rather than his pocket calculator, and use a phone, rather than email. In 2014 he predicted that once you start to make machines that are rivaling and surpassing humans with intelligence, it's going to be very difficult for us to survive. It's just an inevitability.
He became friends with the late actress Sally Farmiloe through their membership of Mensa, for those with high IQ.
He is survived by his three children Crispin, Bartholomew and Belinda.
Picture by Edward Lloyd
SubEditor Diana Austin
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