Guys, you may/may not have heard the sad news which seems to have broke tonight. Just got in from a lovely meal out for Bev's birthday with friends and as I have a quick look at the breaking news, I spotted this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58587521 I think the majority of us on here will always remember Sir Clive very fondly as being truly quite remarkable with his ideas and electronics know-how (even if some of his projects weren't quite as successful as he had hoped) and certainly a guy who opened the door to so so many young aspiring teenage would-be programmers and keen computing enthusiasts back then in our heydays... In other words, us. A lot of us wouldn't have our computer hobbies now if it wasn't for Sir Clive and guys like him that opened the doors which fired our imaginations and allowed us all to dream of either programming some amazing little machine that we could suddenly afford (perhaps getting a simple type-in listing to work) or maybe fitting some new hardware peripheral that made our bog-standard machine suddenly bigger and better etc. If it hadn't been for the ability of guys like Sir Clive to see the potential of these home micro computer things as a consumer product, I'm sure our lives would have been much duller and less exciting, fellas. God bless him. I'm going to dedicate some computer "play time" to his machines now as soon as possible. His ZX81 definitely changed my life as before I got mine, I struggled at school with computing and couldn't fathom the beasts one bit. Afterwards, I fell in love with 8bits. RIP Sir Clive Sinclair (1940-2021)
Never spoke to him, saw him, and he was a very serious man (well he was then) Really liked my ZX80 and 81 even though I knew nothing about coding My first thing from Sinclair was the calculator and as a school boy I loved it and I still wish I had it. Very stylish in it's white case. I remember discovering how to make the words BOOB and OIL on it It's also had a bug where you could press a selection of buttons and it suddenly started counting up from zero, like a stop watch, but I'm pretty sure it did not have that as a feature.. Anyway, he brought some very loved home computers to our homes before anyone else did at that sort of price.. RIP
Sad news, I know he had been unwell for a long time but even so it’s a sad day. My first sight of a computer was at school, our Design & Technology teacher had brought in his ZX Spectrum and was playing The Hobbit while we were supposed to be drawing, by the time the lesson ended we were all crowded around him watching. The was the start of the computer club at school and one by one we all got computers of various models depending on budget. With the 48K Speccy being £149.99 by the time I got one compared to the £399 for a BBC Model B it’s little wonder they flew off the shelves. I always thought he was a bit bemused that people mainly used Speccy’s to play games and not “proper” computing but he helped get the U.K. computer game industry going. I would never have done Computer Science at college if I hadn’t got a Spectrum to fire my interest as we never got any BBC Micro’s until my last year at school.
Here, here, Rich. This guy is so so so gonna be missed as he was a true genius in the way, back then, he could spot the potential of these amazing things. Mind, it's so true that like you say, they didn't always end up being used as he envisaged!! Get this cranked up to 11 on yer desktop speakers: Hilarious. God bless him.
It's very true that he shaped our futures, like Richie, had I not had a ZX80 I may have never got in to computing in the way I did, without computing Maplin would never have happened, so I / we probably owe this man a lot..
Even here in France, I remember learning computing and playing with ZX81 computers at school back in 1986! Reposez en paix Messire Clive Sinclair!
Lovely, lovely to hear of your nostalgic anecdotes, guys. We truly do owe this guy so so much in terms of firing our computing imaginations and getting into this absorbing hobby of ours.
Kim Justice has made a nice little video tribute to the man, the myth, the Sinclair legend too, guys: I hope you enjoyed it and once more, thank you for the wonderful memories, Uncle Clive. Oh, just time to include this Inside Out edition from 9yrs ago. Do watch this too - some great old footage spanning the generations of Sinclair's innovations:
