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.