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General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc. |
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7th Oct 2021, 11:23 am | #81 |
Heptode
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Wellington, New Zealand.
Posts: 653
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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.
RIP Sir Clive - when I was a kid I remember lusting for his items in Practical Electronics- not only remarkable specs but the visual designs appealed immensely - they were what the future would be I was certain. Still so entranced by them that about 10 years ago when the odd item such as a Micromatic or flat screen TV appeared on local internet auction sites I bought them going or not (they were'nt) - always wanted one of his digital watches as well!! The future I feel turned out to be not as good as we hoped - colonies on Mars etc did not eventuate, politicians do not seem to have improved BUT we do have the internet. So I thank him also for the vision he gave me of what could be.
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7th Oct 2021, 7:58 pm | #82 |
Octode
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Worcestershire, UK.
Posts: 1,880
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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.
End of an era. Micromatic and Cambridge Scientific calculator kits were my experience of Sinclair products, and I remember well the prolific ad's for audio stuff in the monthly's.
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8th Oct 2021, 1:16 pm | #83 |
Heptode
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Duffort, Gers, France
Posts: 714
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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.
I remember sometime in the 1970s being invited to a market research event in central London. An unnamed pocket calculator manufacturer wanted opinions of it’s latest calculator and some postgrads from the physics department of nearby UCL had been invited to try it out. Some of us had bought Sinclair Scientifics and the general opinion of them was that they were slow and inaccurate. One of us had thrown his away when it took 30s to give him a wrong answer to a complicated calculation. Others had invested in HP 35s and one of us had a calculator that had brackets instead of reverse polish (I can’t remember the manufacturer).
We were ushered into a room and each given an anonymised calculator to play with. It was a primitive sort of thing, not much more than four functions. It also had a habit of getting stuck in loops and flashing the display endlessly. Completely useless for our purposes. After a while we gave our opinion that it was way behind the state of the art and looked like the sort of thing that Sinclair might produce. It turned out it was indeed a prototype of Sinclair’s latest offering. It didn’t have any names on it but I suspect it was later marketed as the Enterprise. Sinclair obviously didn’t take much notice or our opinion.
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Stuart The golden age is always yesterday - Asa Briggs |
8th Oct 2021, 3:57 pm | #84 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK.
Posts: 11,556
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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.
Forum member Tim(bucus)'s recent tribute to Clive and his gadgets has a section showing the Sinclair programmable calculator being used.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkyLkpf7GSo |
10th Oct 2021, 1:03 pm | #85 |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Gloucester, Glos. UK.
Posts: 2,150
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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.
For anyone that follows Sir Clives career , there is a special 4 page article about his life and ideas in the next months edition of Old Retrogamer.
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Oh I've had that for years dear!! |
15th Nov 2021, 11:31 am | #86 |
Heptode
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, UK.
Posts: 693
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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.
Not sure if it's been mentioned elsewhere on the forum, but there's a Sinclair Memorial event this weekend (20/21st November 2021) at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/d...21st-November/ This venue is on my 'to do' list but sadly have other plans this weekend. Sorry for the short notice. SR |