Sir Clive Sinclair
A British entrepreneurs and inventor, Clive Marles Sinclair was born on July 30th, 1940, in England.
He founded Sinclair Radionics at the beginning of the 60’s. There he started by developing radios and High-Fidelity systems, by mail, to hobbyists (currently called makers). He moved to Cambridge in 1967.
In 1972 he launched the first pocket calculator, the Executive. He found great success in this market and even ruled it for a while, in England. In the 70s he also invested in digital watches or pocket televisions, all objects that you can find in our Museum.
Sinclair also had a relevant contribute to the Electronics Instruments area, first with the brand Sinclair and afterwards Thandar (that still exists today as Thurlby-Thandar).
In 1978 he begins his work on the computing area, which granted him worldwide fame and that is the reason you are seeing this page from our museum today.
The work of Sinclair Research in this field granted him the knighthood in 1983 becoming officially Sir Clive Sinclair.
But it was the huge success of his low-cost computers with children and teenagers that granted him the fond title of “Uncle Clive”.
During the 80s he started working in electric mobility products – one of his passions – being the most famous the Sinclair C5 which was also his biggest commercial flop. But the C5 is just one of several products developed in this field that is now more up-to-date than ever.
On the event of all the problems with the Sinclair QL computer (launched in 1984), the C5 commercial flop and the 1985 flat pocket TV (FTV-1), Clive Sinclair sold the Sinclair Computers brand to Amstrad.
In the years to come, among several creations, Clive developed the Cambridge Z88 portable computer/PDA and developed some other miniature radios like the X1 in 1997.
In 1999 he received IEEE’s Computer Entrepreneur award.
Clive Sinclair was an active member of the MENSA Society, destined for people with a very high IQ, where he served as president for many years.
Clive Sinclair passed away in London on
September 16th 2021 at the age of 81 years old.
May he REST IN PEACE.
In February 2025, at the GOTY gala in the LOAD ZX Museum, with the permission of the Sinclair family, Clive Sinclair made the opening speech by means of AI technology. This was done to honour his legacy, celebrate the presence of his son Crispin Sinclair in the museum, and also to showcase how far computing technology has evolved.
The video was a creation of a famous Portuguese programmer (co-author of Alien Evolution, Gremlin Graphics, 1987), and friend of the museum: Rui Tito.