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I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
British venture capitalists are the bane of cutting edge businesses.
My science teacher tried to raise money to buy a ZX80 for the school, but the headmaster wouldn't let him do it because it wasn't for charity (and I guess the head thought computers were a gimmick which wouldn't catch on...).
I played a few games on the Spectrum but my main memory is reading big chunks of code to my brother so he could type it in and get infinite lives, or something.
RIP Sir Clive.
RIP.
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https://i.imgur.com/KnhsNgH.jpg
A wonderfully inventive person, he virtually invented home computing with a British flavour.
But an innovator nonetheless and sad news.
Unfortunately, I joined not too long before the company started drowning in financial problem partly due to the failure of the C5. So most of my time there was witnessing the downfall.
There were some amazing characters working there though, most notably Ivor Catt who had patented IIRC the Wafer Scale tech that was being researched. He used to drive to work in an old 1960s Mr Whippy Ice Cream van.
R.I.P Clive and thanks for the great memories.. ( and those 12 bottles of champagne)
I suppose that is my first experience of what any form of 'modern technology' was
Like others had mentioned, I recall log books for math's lessons at school
I might have once owned a Sinclair calculator - Maybe ?? - But otherwise I know I never purchased any other Sinclair product , for whatever reason that maybe - But I was never into computer games etc
A few wacky ideas maybe, but maybe he was ahead of the time as well - RIP Sir Clive
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That whole early Sinclair computer thing passed me by and I only really knew of Clive as a slight figure of fun because of the C5. But yet clearly a pioneer who should probably be remembered as such. RIP.
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If I remember right, early microprocessors were quite power-hungry, so although there were electronic calculators before Sinclair came along, they had to be mains powered. His innovation was realising that the microprocessor retained its memory and settings briefly after it was powered off. He realised that by strobing the power supply on a duty cycle of something like 1:10 he could reduce consumption to the level where it was feasible to make a battery-powered calculator.
Early calculators that replaced adding machines looked and felt like adding machines. They were big and chunky and some of them were even designed to make mechanical noises when keys were pressed. 'Scientific' calculators designed to supersede the slide rule inherited all the accidental qualities of the slide rule. They were unnecessarily complicated to use and often gave quite inaccurate results.