Sir Clive Sinclair

Most Acorn and Sinclair fans will have seen the BBC’s Micro Men, a drama based on the rivalry between the two. Make sure to also check out the commentary from Chris Curry, Steve Furber and Hermann Hauser.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yaonVYOTSsk

Sir Clive Sinclair RIP.

I once found myself waiting behind Sir Clive’s Porsche to fill up at the Shell petrol station at the end of Fen Causeway in Cambridge. I am shocked to discover that he was a year younger than me. The trouble with the ZX80 was that there was nothing you could do with it. I was more interested in the short-lived Jupiter Ace, which it inspired, which ran Forth rather than Basic, which could be bought from a corner shop in City Road a few yards away from my mother’s house. I bought one as a curiosity for the daughter of a friend in Bangladesh; it was almost certainly the only one in that country.

Nearly purchased a ZX Spectrum after I had a ZX81 and before I got in to Acorn with an Electron.

I went to a computer club meeting and seeing it in the flesh and some issues users were having put me off, that and my wobbly RAM pack experience with the ZX81.

Clive Sinclair rightly has his place in computing history and should be remembered for doing so much for computing and other areas in the UK over the 70’s and 80’s. RIP.

This youtube video summed up computing in the 80’s.

80’s Computing

My first computer was the ZX80 in kit-form. I learnt two things from it – firstly I was going to be interested in computing, and second, I needed to find something better than a Sinclair if I was to learn anything. Hence my first Acorn – an Atom, also in kit-form.