Who did more than any other person in history to make computers affordable? My nomination goes to Sir Clive Sinclair, who was born on this day 85 years ago, July 30, 1940. And I’m an American who never used one of his computers.
Clive Sinclair: King of affordable computers
Clive Sinclair was much bigger in the UK than he was in the United States, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. In the UK, his computers were runaway best sellers, and they provided an introduction to computers even to households who found the Commodore 64 too expensive.
And that was what was brilliant about him. He undercut even Commodore. His first computer, the ZX80, aimed to be the cheapest possible computer that 1980 technology would allow. It sold for 99 pounds and he sold about 100,000 units, a good number for 1980. He followed it up the next year with the ZX81, a slightly improved model that could still sell for an absurdly low price. He followed that up with the ZX Spectrum in 1982, which was the most commercially successful and long-running of the three because it had fewer compromises and it added color and sound.
In the UK, the ZX Spectrum is iconic. It didn’t monopolize home computing in the 1980s, but virtually everyone knew someone who had one if they didn’t have one themselves. The Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC were also very popular, but the Spectrum’s affordability gave it a following that lives on to this day.
In 1983, Clive Sinclair was knighted, becoming Sir Clive Sinclair, for his contributions to the computer industry.
The Sinclair QL, introduced January 12, 1984, was less successful. The QL tried to be an affordable business computer based on the Motorola 68008, a cost-reduced version of the 68000 used in the original Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST with an 8-bit external data bus. But Sinclair rushed the QL to market, and its buggy firmware and problems with its disk drive gave it a bad reputation and softened demand. Sinclair suspended production in 1985, and officially discontinued it in April 1986.
Sinclair in the United States
In the United States, we remember Sinclair as half of Timex Sinclair, a joint venture that imported Sinclair computers. And we remember them as a flash in the pan, if we remember them at all.
And that’s unfair. It’s always been unfair. I can tell you that I remember reading, even in 1983, that Commodore came out of nowhere with its VIC-20, which was the surprise best selling computer of 1982.
What was the surprise? The accepted answer was that Commodore had been selling computers since 1977, but Radio Shack and Apple always overshadowed them. And maybe that’s some of it.
But Clive Sinclair nearly played the spoiler in 1982. The Timex Sinclair 1000 outsold Commodore in the second half of the year, selling half a million units. It sold so well, that at the end of the year, the industry rightfully would have expected the Timex Sinclair 1000, the North American version of the ZX81, to have been the best selling computer of 1982.
The problem was Timex couldn’t keep the momentum going in 1983. The Timex Sinclair 1000 sold poorly in 1983, only selling 100,000 units that year. The Spectrum was really a better match for the US market, but Timex had a difficult time getting US consumers to give the Timex Sinclair 2068, its version of the Spectrum, a chance. Timex withdrew from the market at the end of 1983, and that marked the end of Sinclair computers in the United States.
Side effects of Sinclair in the US market
But for a duration of 12 to 18 months, Sinclair gave its two biggest US competitors a scare. Radio Shack introduced its TRS-80 MC-10, a slimmed down computer they could sell for $120. Commodore developed an architecture they could use to reach nearly any price point, theoretically even into the $49-$79 range.
In the United States, the Commodore 64 holds the position of being the home computer everyone either had or knew someone who had one. But if it hadn’t been for Sinclair, they wouldn’t have cut prices as aggressively as they did.
Contrasting opinions on computers in the 1980s
And the looking over from this side of the Atlantic, I have to give Clive Sinclair a lot of credit. In the UK, the attitude toward computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s was that they needed computer literacy to avoid being left behind. That attitude neither began nor ended with Clive Sinclair, but he added plenty of fuel to that fire to keep it burning. If you couldn’t afford the computer you had in school, you probably could afford a Sinclair, and you could follow along enough to learn a lot.
In the United States, if you liked computers, there was something wrong with you. As far as my dad was concerned, the only people who needed computers were accountants. But Dad liked the idea of me becoming an accountant, so he bought a computer in 1984. Everyone else in the town we lived in said I was up to no good and was some kind of evil hacker. Better not tell them what I ended up doing for a living was stopping hackers. Takes one to know one, you know.
My understanding of the UK attitude toward computers was they just expected lots of positive outcomes. They didn’t know exactly what they were, and they didn’t care. They were happy to give everyone access and let them figure out what they were going to do with it.
Exit from the computer market but not from innovation
Sir Clive Sinclair sold his computer company to his archrival Alan Sugar’s Amstrad in 1986. From 1986 to 2010, he focused on transportation. His inventions included a folding bike that could fit in a handbag, and an electric vehicle that never reached market. Sinclair saw the need for sustainable transportation long before many others did, which is admirable.
Sinclair died in London on September 16, 2021, due to complications from cancer. He was 81.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
Odd fact, the Microdrive, a device originally sold with the Spectrum, was a mobius strip tape loop, probably the only time this has been used in this way. This was typical Sinclair, ie very innovative, but maybe not the best solution or implementation.
Very good article. Indeed, Clive was king of cheap computing. Just one comment: the QL did not sell with disks, but with a couple of embedded [microdrives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Microdrive), that were not very reliable. Microdrives used tapes to achieve a behaviour similar to a disk.