It is with sadness that we note the passing of the British writer, engineer, home computer pioneer, and entrepreneur, Sir Clive Sinclair, who died this morning at the age of 81 after a long illness. He is perhaps best known among Hackaday readers for his ZX series of home computers from the 1980s, but over a lifetime in the technology industry there are few corners of consumer electronics that he did not touch in some way.
Back in the early '80s I was still in high school and had absolutely no money for a home computer (that’s how we called them) but I had money to buy computer magazines. So almost frantically I read articles about Sir Clive Sinclair and his inventions, ZX80, ZX81 and ZXSpectrum, imagining what I could do with one. I actually never bought a ZX (but years later a COMX-35 instead) but Sir Clive was the one who got me interested in computers in the first place.
Yes he really brought ‘real’ computers to so many homes. That kit approach was also what made it so cost-effective. Being forced to actually type in all the BASIC code, helped me understand how programming worked. It actually helped kick-start so many careers, and got computing on the map for the masses. I did manage to rescue a ZX Spectrum from someone who had no idea of what it really was. I only had the ZX81, so must still get around to actually firing up that ZX Spectrum (while I still have a TV with a tuner on it).
BASIC was really basic (and slow) at that time. So I remember programming hexadecimal to speed things up. A real pain keeping me up night after night. Good times ;-)
Yep hex was a real main to input though ;-)