These days we are accustomed to seeing high-tech innovators in the mold of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Yet more common are the inventors, pioneers, and dreamers whose contributions to technological advancement didn’t catapult them into the ranks of the world’s richest people but whose pluck and spirit must nonetheless be acknowledged.
Near the top of the list is the Englishman Clive Sinclair, who, in his capacity as the founder of a variety of companies, brought into people’s homes a litany of reasonably priced, fairly ahead-of-their-time electronic devices, including an innovative pocket calculator, a primitive digital wristwatch, and a plastic-encased home computer — the latter little more than a keyboard that needed to be tethered to your telly in order to see anything. In these rudimentary gizmos and gadgets, we see the origins of fancier, better-working, and more expensive devices of today.
Sinclair, who died on Sept. 16 at the age of 81, retained a healthy sense of humor about his place in history: He’d always been known as the guy who thought up things that were later exploited and perfected by others. Appearing on Channel 4’s Clive Anderson Talks Back in 1990, the amiable, soft-spoken Sinclair was confronted with a series of past inventions that, even three decades ago, seemed passe, including the Sinclair Black Watch, which host Anderson blasted as scarcely an improvement on existing timekeepers. “This one you actually had to press a button,” Anderson said. “Well, you couldn’t really see it in daylight.”
Yet Sinclair was philosophical about the way his rather cheap stabs at innovation laid the groundwork for future advances. “I don’t see it as my job to go on doing these things forever,” Sinclair said, with a capitalist’s eye on the next idea. “What I like doing is starting them.”
Born in Richmond, Surrey, Clive displayed an aptitude for math and a propensity to invent things while still in short pants, but in a move that foreshadowed Bill Gates’s fateful decision to drop out of Harvard University and Peter Thiel’s counsel for bright young minds to forgo the college experience, he bypassed higher education to pursue what he already recognized was his passion.
A spell in electronics journalism was followed by the debut of the Sinclair Executive pocket calculator, which, as with most of his inventions, can be seen in use on YouTube for those too young to have actually made use of the device. The calculator looks clunky, and the sounds made when depressing its numbers do not inspire confidence. But who can argue with a product manufactured decades ago that remains in working order?
The Sinclair Black Watch seems to have been every bit as much of a debacle as Anderson suggested, though the Sinclair ZX80 home computer, and its derivatives, is another matter. Although modern YouTubers approach this antique either with nostalgia or disbelief, to the children of the 1980s, it must have seemed like a little marvel: an affordable way to jump aboard the personal computer bandwagon. The ability to play games, including Knight Lore and Jet Set Willy, contributed to the success of a later model, the ZX Spectrum.
Then came the cars. In 1985, the Sinclair C5, a battery-powered, steering bar-driven, open-air vehicle that resembles a cross between a tricycle and a Segway, wowed no one in particular. Only a fraction of the vehicles produced got sold, which suggests that a majority of Britons did not wish to resemble cast members of Woody Allen’s futuristic satire Sleeper.
Yet Sinclair soldiered on, rolling out the battery-powered bicycle, the Sinclair Zike, in 1992. Although he never revolutionized travel, he is to be credited for perceiving the direction in which the world was moving. What’s most refreshing about him, though, is how lightly he wore his status as a pioneer. Innovation wasn’t a religion to Sinclair — it was a business and a pleasure.
Speaking with the Guardian in 2010, he confessed to being a Luddite who used neither computers nor email. “Well, I find them annoying,” he said. “I’d much prefer someone would telephone me if they want to communicate. No, it’s not sheer laziness — I just don’t want to be distracted by the whole process.” And if Clive Sinclair had gotten distracted, he wouldn’t have been able to dream up so many charming gadgets and gizmos.
Peter Tonguette writes for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Humanities.
