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Clive Sinclair, who brought us the ZX Spectrum, has diedThe computer which introduced many in the UK to PC gaming
The computer which introduced many in the UK to PC gaming
Clive Sinclair, the founder of the company which brought us the ZX Spectrum computer, has died. The first encounter with PC gaming for many of a certain age in the UK wasn’t through any beige box MS-DOS or Windows, it was on that futuristic wee black keyboard with rubbery keys and a colourful stripe, which loaded software from cassette tapes. I’m too young to have seen its glory days but I think the first PC game I played was a Speccy shoot ‘em up, a magical experience I didn’t believe would actually work when I first saw my pal plug a tape deck into a keyboard.
The BBCreport that Clive Sinclair died on Thursday of cancer, aged 81. He started out selling radio kits, latergetting intostylish pocket calculators, mini TVs, and wrist wratches with Sinclair Radionics before moving into computers. Sinclair Research’s growning glory was the ZX Spectrum in 1982, one of the systems which defined the early years of gaming in the UK.
“Whirr. Click. Squawk. A tape plays, a screen flickers into life, a memory is born,” Old Man Alec Meer (RPS in peace) said inrecalling The Hobbiton Speccy. “A first memory of a computer game, of an introduction to what computer games were.”
The Hobbit Walkthrough, ZX SpectrumWatch on YouTube
The Hobbit Walkthrough, ZX Spectrum
Alec also wrote about playingthe first Alien gameon Speccy, if you want more memories.
Clive Sinclair is maybe best remembered in pop culture with japes about the Sinclair C5, a one-person recumbent electric cycle which launched in 1985 then flopped so hard it ended production within the year. The technology to make such an idea viable did not yet really exist, nor did the infrastructure and culture to make it unhorrifying. Utopian design. He dabbled in electric bicycles as well, again too early. E-bikes have taken off now that we have the tech to make them more practical, though. I’ve also recently seen several C5s converted to pedal power, though I can’t say the riding position looks comfortable. The BBC havegabbed about his inventionsmore, if you’re curious.
Alright, you can resume your bickering about whether the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 was better.
