Sir Clive Sinclair.
Sir Clive Sinclair is something of a hero to me, and I suspect a lot of other UK computer users in their 30's and older. He more or less single handedly created the UK home computer market.
In the interview below Sir Clive discusses many issues: His view of the internet, the future of electric vehicles, flying cars, and the development of the computer. It's a typically eclectic mix of ideas, with ambitious schemes side by side with very perceptive comments on the current state of technology. An edited version of the interview below will appear on iPM this Saturday, below is the source material - largely unedited.
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In the article we reference a speech before congress. To clarify that was the 1984 speech before the Congressional Clearing House on the Future. I do recommend reading it. If you find any of Sir Clive's ideas far fetched, reflect on how many in this speech are now reality.
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This interview is a delight.
A thought-provoking piece of forward looking living history.
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Sir Clive is the man! I was in grade school when the ZX-80 came out and had saved enough money to buy the ZX-81 kit. I built it and gained the respect of my parents. I taught myself Basic programming, which got me into a college Fortran class while I was still in high school, which got me into engineering college. Thanks Sir Clive: you changed my life and made it better.
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A little fawning for a PM interview perhaps.
As I clearly recall.
a) The ZX80 crashed if you left it on for more than 20 minutes.
b) The ZX81 was useless without the RAM pack and even more useless with it.
c) The Spectrum keyboard dessicated your fingers. Shift-shift symbol-shift shift-4, anyone?
d) None of these machines had a proper "operating system". The BASIC was not procedural, you could not learn to program on them.
e) The microdrive was rubbish, and the printer burnt onto a roll of silver toilet paper. Your "printout" disappeared if you left it in the sun.
f) The screen layout was awful. You had only a "background" and "foreground" for each 8x8 pixel square.
g) There was no assembler built in (as there was on the BBC) so you couldn't learn to do assembly on it.
h) There was no networking. The BBC Micro had "econet", for example.
h) The Sinclair QL was indeed "quite late" and again had a terrible keyboard, terrible software and so on.
The Spectrum was a machine that people BOUGHT GAMES for - it might have introduced of games computers but it did naught for education.
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The Z88 was rather marvellous though...
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Hi Chris
Any chance you could shove this video down the P'n'B podcast feed? I'd prefer to watch it on the iPod than at work... Thanks
Parky
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Sir Clive Sinclar is an absolute legend.
I loved my Spectrum with it's rubber keys. I wasted much of my youth on it and learnt to program (remember CRASH mag, with those games you could type painfully in).
I owe my whole career and enthusiasm to his easily accessible technology.
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