Passed away today aged 81. His daughter Belinda Sinclair told The Guardian that her father died at his London home on Thursday morning. Ms Sinclair told the BBC that her father had cancer for more than a decade and was still working on inventions up until last week "because that was what he loved doing". Remember getting a 48k ZX Spectrum for Christmas one year. Think most posters of a certain age would have had one
I never had any of his inventions but I remember being intrigued by his C5 electric vehicle, a single seater. It was developed in the early 1980s but never got going despite the obvious benefits of electric powered personal transport. It would have been a nightmare being so close to the ground in heavy traffic, not to mention the choking hazard from the exhaust fumes from other road users. RIP Sir Clive - a man ahead of his time.
I too never had any Sinclair product because I was firmly in the Commodore camp. I had a Vic20 and then moved on to a Commodore 64. But it is undeniable that the guy was a true pioneer and changed the shape of computing. Many people my age will remember spending large chunks of the early 80s getting into computing even if it was just playing games and he is largely responsible for that.
With the exception of the C5 he was a brilliant inventor....sadly not all of his inventions came at the right time. I had a miniscule radio he made that you bought as a kit or ready built that was brilliant and I still have one of his Sinclair Microvision TV's that were also brilliant...not great for watching the test match though.
Ah, the heady days of the ZX Spectrum 48k, when games were loaded from cassette tapes (by a wire connected to a tape recorder), and footballers only had two attributes: skill and energy. RIP Sir Clive.
I was Vic20 too, never got round to the 64. And Spectrum was a bit out of my price range. I remember playing Hopper (or was it Frogger?) and piloting a plane through skyscrapers that changed height. And I wrote a Fruit Machine program from a book that stopped me using proper fruit machines as much. As @Prince of Risborough stated, he was ahead of his time - his daughter said he sometimes invented things that people didn't realise they actually needed. Til later. I could see somebody like Dyson or Tesla buying the rights to his C5 and modernise it as the only limitation he faced was the technology limits of the time. With a bit of modernisation it could potentially be relaunched and it would be a fitting legacy to the man.
You might well be on to something there, especially as there doesn't seem to be any distinction between goalkeepers and defenders.
