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POCKET TVs
Clive Sinclar had had, since the ‘60s, an obsession with creating pocket TVs, but did not release the first models up until the ‘70s. In this exhibition, we showcase many designs from that decade, as well as two models of the FTV from the ‘80s, with slight changes. One of them, the one closest to the front, came directly from Sir Clive Sinclair. It was given to us by Engineer Carlos Mania Nogueira, owner of Landry, the first importer of Sinclair computers to Portugal. He told us it was gifted to him in London, from the very hands of Sir Clive Sinclair’s father, at his son’s request. Engineer Nogueira had previously given Sir Clive boxes he had made for the Sinclair ZX81 computer.
Clive Sinclair started thinking about pocket TVs in the early ‘60s. At the time, this brought up many technical difficulties that were very relevant, such as how to feed Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT; and another difficulty was actually finding miniature versions of these). Even still, in 1966, with Hitachi CRT’s, Sinclair presented a miniature TV prototype called Microvision. Due to all the difficulties surrounding production and the natural technological evolution, it ended up never being produced even though it was advertised that it would be available in 1967.
In 1976, in the United States, the first Sinclair television was released, once again called Microvision TV1A. The CRT was produced by AEG Telefunken, and extremely durable hardware was custom-made for Sinclair. Its’ very high price tag of $400 made it only available for the business enterprise/executive public – very uncommon for Sinclair. It was a black and white television that could be battery powered or run on electricity. It was able to work with VHS and UHF and handled the three major TV standards that worked on the majority of countries. Production time turned out to be very long and the orders started to pile up. By the time Sinclair was able to produce 4,000 units a month, the orders started slimming down and inventory started pilling up. This translated into a loss of almost half a million pounds that, thankfully, the company was still able to change around.
In Fall 1978 a bettered version was released, the TV1B, which Sinclair thought was going to be the answer to all the problems they were going through at the time. At the same time, the TV1C and the TV1D were, respectively, American and European variants of the model, capable of working with other TV systems present in different countries. Added to that, a mini-monitor (therefore, with no tuning), the Mon1A, based on the TV1A hardware.
On July 1979 the NEB (which had been introduced to the company after the Black Watch fiasco) got fed up and forced Clive Sinclair to abandon Sinclair Radionics. TV1B rights were sold to Binatone, mas the product quickly vanished from the market.
The last TV released by Clive Sinclair appeared during the computation boom, which Sir Clive saw as a way to fund other products, such as pocket TVs or the C5. Revenue from the Spectrum allowed him do fund the development of yet another model, the TV80 (with a price tag of around £80), more commonly known as the Flat Screen TV (FTV). This model did not use a regular CRT, but something custom made. It was release to the public in 1984, an investment of around £4 million. It is estimated that 15,000 units were sold, which is not surprising with the generalization of alternative technology such as the LCDs.
