Sir Clive Sinclair has died.

Caporegime
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On the road....
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...uting-pioneer-sir-clive-sinclair-dies-aged-81

A true pioneer of home computing, without whom I imagine many - myself included - would not have our passion for computers we have today.

I had a ZX81 and Spectrum 48K back in the day, fond memories (when they worked! :D)

A difficult man by all accounts, but a legend in his own lifetime.

R.I.P. :(

Think I'll be watching "Micro Men" later.

 
Soldato
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In a world of my own
I still have a zx81, a 16k rubber keys spectrum, a 48k rubber keys spectrum, a 48k+, a 128k toast rack, a +2a, a +2b and a +3.

I’ll have to get a few out this weekend and play in memory to the mad genius.
 
Caporegime
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Welling, London
Sad news.

If he’s cremated they surely have to play the screeching loading noise as his coffin is slid into the furnace. It would be a fitting end. Especially if the gas gets cutoff and they have to start all over again.
 
Man of Honour
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Sad news.

If he’s cremated they surely have to play the screeching loading noise as his coffin is slid into the furnace. It would be a fitting end. Especially if the gas gets cutoff and they have to start all over again.

Coffin crashes because someone has the temerity to think about moving or breathing while in the same room.
 
Soldato
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First computer, 48k Spectrum here.

I recently read, Electronic Dreams: How 1980s Britain Learned to Love the Computer Tom Lean. During the 1980s there was a MAJOR drive, supported at the highest levels of (Thatcher's) government, own minister, to introduce children to computers, not using them, but understanding them, programming them. Government paid half the cost of all those BBC computers in schools and lots of BBC TV programmes.

Then support collapsed, with it the UK computer manufacturing industry (in 1983 the UK had the highest per capita computer ownership, mostly manufactured here). In the nineties, computing education moved to Information Technology - touch typing and spreadsheets ! The universities also suffered in a collapse in interest in computer science courses in the nineties.

He was a British hero. Missed opportunity.
 
Associate
Joined
31 Jul 2003
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I could reminisce endlessly about what joy that 48k Spectrum gave to me. I'm saddened as another part of my childhood has gone, and I'm reminded that my own game over screen is creeping ever closer. He was a genuine eccentric genius and fitted the stereotype for sure. I even have one of his early calculators, more like a Star Trek communicator with it's flip up cover and that's what I pretended it was as a kid! He was one of a kind and has left a legacy in the lives of so many of us who are of a certain generation. RIP Sir Clive.
 
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