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Clive Sinclair, 1940-2021

Clive Sinclair (or Sir Clive Sinclair if you are in a Commonwealth realm) passed away today.

While he may be widely known for the Sinclair C5, the failed three-wheeled electric vehicle, I would like to recognize his contributions to home computing.

At £79.95 in kit form and £99.95 assembled, it was about one-fifth of the price of other home computers at the time.

The Guardian

His ZX80 computer brought computing to the masses, as it cost about a fifth of what other home computers cost. Its successor, the ZX81, brought the price of home computing down even further – to a low £49.95 for those willing (and brave enough) to assemble the ZX81 from a kit. The ZX81 made such an impact that it was ranked as the 9th most influential computer in history by TechRadar back in 2010 (with the original IBM PC being #8 and the original Apple Macintosh being #10).

His ZX Spectrum computers brought affordable personal computing to the masses and sold in their [sic] millions across the world.

Yahoo! News

In all, millions of Spectrum ZX computers were sold world-wide, giving millions of people a start in computing.

Thank you, Clive.