Clive Sinclar

Triumph of the nerds was interesting but I haven’t seen it for years, must track it down and have another look.

Mike

Back on the original topic, my impression of Sinclair was: great ideas but the implementation was a bit lacking.

I owe Sir Clive Sinclair a for his introduction of the Sinclair calculator.
In those days a (functional ) calculator available to and useable by all was revolutionary.
Strangely enough, the number of my female colleagues interested in this kit outnumbered the male colleagues 10:1
I entered into an agreement with my colleagues that if they ordered/paid for the kit, I would complete/test it.
During the slow hours of night shifts I must have completed around ten or more of these kits, thereby earning many brownie-points, appropriately rewarded, I'm happy to recall.

Fond memories of my ZX81, thank you Sir Clive.

RIP

I am seriously conflicted about my ZX81 and Sir Clive.

After my O-levels I worked for my Father and Grandfather all summer, a great time to learn and appreciate them, their wit, labour and skill.

I was well paid too and put all of my hard-earned cash into a ZX81 with 16k RAM, heat-sensitive printer and a cassette tape recorder

The damn thing was a disaster, over the next year I probably had a working set for about two weeks, Sinclair was unbelievably slow at delivery, repair and communication.

I was in the first year to do A-level computer studies at my school but 1600 boys had ONE PC, so having your own at home was very useful and mine was dud.

So on the one side its a fantastic product, so far ahead of what came before, (yet not what was to come so soon afterwards) on the other hand the crook took money off children with no intent or means of satisfying consumer law.

Amazingly I still have it, maybe it still works, maybe prices will rise like the price of paintings after the master's death. I do know I need to retrieve that old CRT telly from my mothers loft.