Sir Clive Sinclair: Home computing pioneer and pocket calculator inventor dies aged 81
Sir Clive Sinclair, who invented the pocket calculator and popularised home computing, has died at the age of 81, according to reports.
His daughter Belinda Sinclair told the Guardian that her father died at his home in London on Thursday morning.
Sir Clive was the brains behind the first affordable consumer computer launching in 1980 at a cost of less than £100.
The multimillionaire entrepreneur’s company launched the ZX models in a decade where personal computer use boomed.
Sinclair became the first company in the world to sell more than a million computers, making Sir Clive’s surname a household word.
His daughter told the Guardian: “He was a rather amazing person. Of course, he was so clever and he was always interested in everything.
“My daughter and her husband are engineers so he’d be chatting engineering with them.”
What were the wonderful and ambitious inventions Sir Clive made?
The inventor's first company, Sinclair Radionics, made mail order radio kits, including the smallest transistor radio in the world.
Later in life, he pioneered the pocket calculator, earning him the nickname “electronics wizard”.
Other ventures included expansions into digital watches and the development of the world’s smallest television set.
It was with another company, Sinclair Research, that Sir Clive found his home computing successes as he faced off against international competition.
The ZX 81 computer launched in 1981 and sold half a million. It was followed up by more powerful models.
Born in 1940, Sir Clive left school at the age of 17, becoming a technical journalist writing specialist manuals.
At the age of 22, he formed Sinclair Radionics which started a long career of creating inventions that would change the face of technology for years to come.
A man of diverse interests, Sir Clive’s projects also saw him explore new technology in the worlds of television and cars.
One ill-fated initiative was the Sinclair C5 vehicle, an electric tricycle heralded as the future of eco-friendly transport but which turned out to be an expensive flop.
Film director Edgar Wright paid tribute to Sir Clive’s computing achievements on Twitter.
He tweeted: “For someone whose first glimpses of a brave new world were the terrifying graphics of 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, I’d like to salute tech pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair.
“He made 21st Century dreams feel possible. Will bash away on the rubber keys of a Spectrum in your honour. RIP.”
Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the Labour Party, tweeted: “This man changed the course of my life.
“And arguably, the digital age for us in the UK started with the Sinclair ZX80, when thousands of kids learnt to code using 1k of RAM. For us, the Spectrum was like a Rolls Royce with 48k.”
Sir Clive was knighted in the birthday honours in 1983.