Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Rorthron
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

Post by Rorthron »

Alessandro wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:28 pm The number of people which made their first steps into information technology, from simple amateurs like myself, to professional programmers, aided by Sinclair's most popular computer is presumably very high. I believe this is the most important legacy of Sinclair's involvement in the home computer industry to this day.
I agree, too, and would expect pretty much everyone on this site to agree. But believing that the ZX81 and Spectrum had a huge impact is not the same as believing Clive Sinclair deserves the credit for them or that his other disasters should be ignored.

At least some of the credit for the ZX81 and Spectrum should go to Richard Altwasser, Steve Vickers, Rick Dickinson, Jim Westwood, Nigel Searle, etc. It's fair also to give Clive Sinclair credit; he clearly must have also been involved. But was the genius of the ZX81 and Spectrum in the strategic decisions (where I think we can assume Clive Sinclair was heavily involved) or the specific designs (where he was less likely to have been)? I think the latter: the ZX series of computers were great pieces of minimal design, but they really weren't the only home computers. In the early 1980s, the UK market was awash with competing home computer designs (even including the terrible Jupiter Ace!).

Also, after the ZX Spectrum, almost everything Clive Sinclair did turned to dust. Microdrives, the QL, the C5, portable CRTs, wafer-scale integration, etc. About the only thing that worked was the Z88 (which was a niche). And yes, we can blame him from not building on the ZX Spectrum. If we give him credit for successes, we have also to include his failures. It was presumably his strategic decision not to continue developing home computers. He had followed the ZX81 up with the Spectrum. He could have followed the Spectrum up with another consumer computer, too, but didn't. There certainly were proposals at Sinclair Research, such as the LC3 or Loki (though I suspect neither of those particular proposals would have been successful).

Acorn's success with the BBC Micro led to the Archimedes and ARM. Even Commodore went on to the Amiga. I believe Apple went on to other things, too. ;)
But Sinclair went down blind alleys.

Yes, he was a visionary. His vision of electric vehicles, robotics and AI all seems prescient now, but it was little more than science fiction at the time, and Clive Sinclair contributed very little or nothing to realising them. The revolution under way at the time was the home computing revolution, and despite a winning start, Clive Sinclair failed to build on it. He had a winning hand, but played it badly.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

Post by Alessandro »

Rorthron wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:06 am It's fair also to give Clive Sinclair credit; he clearly must have also been involved.
I think that's as generic a statement as, say, "Winston Churchill must have been involved in Britain's victory in World War II". Without Sinclair to co-ordinate his collaborators and turn their efforts into a concrete, viable product, we won't be here today. As Ralf pointed out, all that Altwasser and Vickers could create after they left Sinclair Research was the Jupiter Ace - the less said, the better.
Rorthron wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:06 am But was the genius of the ZX81 and Spectrum in the strategic decisions (where I think we can assume Clive Sinclair was heavily involved) or the specific designs (where he was less likely to have been)? I think the latter: the ZX series of computers were great pieces of minimal design, but they really weren't the only home computers. In the early 1980s, the UK market was awash with competing home computer designs (even including the terrible Jupiter Ace!).
Again, let's look at the specifications of the Spectrum and compare them to the competition in April 1982. The Spectrum wasn't exactly state-of-the-art, neither it was intended to be; it was designed as the affordable computer for the masses, to let people be fascinated by the possibility of writing their own software and start a generation of budding programmers. Which is precisely what happened most of the time, before the Amstrad takeover.

Moreover, I won't say the concept of wafer scale integration has entirely turned to dust, at least as far as data storage is concerned. In an interview published on Your Computer, November 1987, Sinclair predicted that solid state would dominate over conventional hard disks. 30 years and more later we are witnessing just that. Research as recent as 2016 has also revived the idea of WSI in the field of artificial intelligence.
Rorthron wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:06 am He could have followed the Spectrum up with another consumer computer, too, but didn't. There certainly were proposals at Sinclair Research, such as the LC3 or Loki (though I suspect neither of those particular proposals would have been successful).
The QL was meant to be a "consumer" computer in a certain sense, aimed at small enterprises and professionals. The key factors should have been the same of the Spectrum: simplicity of use and lower price than its competitors. But the rushed design, with all the problems that followed, and the insistency on using the microdrive cartridges instead of floppy disks as mobile data storage hindered its success, and the C5 fiasco did the rest.

In a nutshell, although Sinclair's vision on mass transport and portable TVs were far too futuristic for their time to be fully turned into real products, and his lack of confidence in others made him take the wrong choices more than often, the ZX range of computers still testify of his ability to pick up the right people for the job and lead them to a common goal. With a more down-to-earth approach and a lesser ego, Sinclair would probably have kept producing home computers as well as other products like an electric bicycle, far more conventional than the C5.

But then he would have been phagocytized by some large American corporation in a few years :twisted:
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Actually if we think about computer revolution from the 80s, almost everybody has lost in a long term.

Where is Commodore today? Where is Atari? Where is Amstrad?

We are all using PCs now. PC means "personal computer" suggesting that it's just a computer, PC=computer. But our PCs use IBM technology. We don't call them IBMs anymore but they are technically IBMs even if are manufactured by someone else.

IBM was the winner of the 80s althouth in let's say 1983 you would never guess it.
You know why? Because it was a big company with experience and tradition, established yet in 19th century, starting from some mechanical machines operating on punch cards. They knew how to survive on competing market, both in good and bad days. Everyone else were newbies, starting their business in small rented flat with 20 year old guys as main engineers. Sometimes they never got a real start like Sam Coupe and sometimes experienced a crazy growth like Atari.

Sinclair actually has always been a small player. I remember that at the peak Atari employed 11000 people. Sinclair at the peak employed 30 people, ordering production and distribution to other companies.

But both Atari and Sinclair eventually went bankrupt, they didn't know how to follow their success.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Alessandro wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:48 am As Ralf pointed out, all that Altwasser and Vickers could create after they left Sinclair Research was the Jupiter Ace - the less said, the better.
It would be more accurate to say that what they CHOOSE to create after they left Sinclair was the Jupiter Ace. They could have come up with any old box of electronics with yet another version of BASIC but decided to go with what they really wanted to spend time, money and effort on creating

Being an original owner and user of the machine I am probably biased but I certainly didn't buy mine to play games on, the idea was to learn FORTH on a dedicated machine free of the tangled mess that BASIC is which I did. Adverts for the ACE at the time concentrated on its FORTH language rather than the gee-whiz games you might play on it (there weren't any anyway) which probably put a lot of game players off but certainly attracted those of us who knew the difference between a computer and a games machine.

To call the Jupiter Ace a failure based on build quality, performance and sales figures is one way of looking at it. For the way it taught me a second programming language and managed to unlock the mysteries of Z80 code almost as a byproduct I'd say it did exactly what it was meant to do. Something for which I will always be grateful.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

Post by 1024MAK »

Acorn, Sinclair, and others all suffered problems with a rapidly expanding market, where they had trouble keeping up with demand. So they kept increasing the production. Only for the demand to plateau, or fall. What had appeared to be an ever expanding market suddenly was no longer. But they did not foresee this.

Sinclair found itself in a situation where it had a huge amount of money tied up in stock piled up in warehouses, with not enough money coming in to pay the large bills that were becoming due. Before the slowdown, this had not been a problem, as cash from sales always meant that there was money in the bank. Acorn also found itself with similar problems. It had stockpiles of Electons it could not sell in any quantity, but got funding from (and eventually bought by) Olivetti.

And so, the solution for Sinclair, was to sell out to Amstrad (who had the cash to pay the creditors).

So it was not just Clive Sinclair's other projects that took down the business. Part of it was that running a business that relied on expected future sales, that was partly seasonal, then a change in demand, was always going to be difficult.

Would a new Spectrum model have helped? Who knows. My feeling is that in late 1983 / early 1984 Sinclair should have realised that a game's machine was a money spinner, and produced a ZX Spectrum with more RAM (80K bytes of RAM would have been very easy to do), Sinclair joystick ports (again, very easy to do, just wire them into the keyboard matrix), and add a sound chip (another easy thing to do). If the The AY-3-8910 or the AY-3-8912 had been chosen, the I/O port(s) could have been used to provide a parallel printer port as well. It could then have been launched in the Winter ready for Christmas.

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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Ralf wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:59 am Actually if we think about computer revolution from the 80s, almost everybody has lost in a long term.

Where is Commodore today? Where is Atari? Where is Amstrad?

We are all using PCs now. PC means "personal computer" suggesting that it's just a computer, PC=computer. But our PCs use IBM technology. We don't call them IBMs anymore but they are technically IBMs even if are manufactured by someone else.

IBM was the winner of the 80s althouth in let's say 1983 you would never guess it.
Except that, IBM got out of the PC market many years ago...

And many of the IBM compatible computer manufacturers have either gone bust, closed or been absorbed by other companies...

It was inevitable that some standardisation would occur somewhere along the line. The ironic thing being that modern PCs running Windows are now not very compatible with the IBM machines the architecture was based on!

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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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If Sir Clive Sinclair hadn't existed, would the British home computing scene in the 1980s be a straight-up fight between Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC users? I'm sure it'd have been a bit more nuanced than that of course, but I do wonder if some of the 'second division' 8-bits would have had more visibility. MSX or Acorn maybe?
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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PeteProdge wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:48 pm If Sir Clive Sinclair hadn't existed, would the British home computing scene in the 1980s be a straight-up fight between Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC users? I'm sure it'd have been a bit more nuanced than that of course, but I do wonder if some of the 'second division' 8-bits would have had more visibility. MSX or Acorn maybe?
Not only the British one. The Spectrum was either first or second in almost all countries where it was imported (also taking into account unofficial distribution markets like Yugoslavia). A notable exception was Germany, where it had to face a strong Commodore and Amstrad/Schneider presence. The Italian market in particular would have been dominated by Commodore for sure, since Amstrad machines were extremely rare and MSX-based systems even more than that here. Maybe other systems like the Olivetti Prodest would have known a little more diffusion, but that's anybody's guess, and they arrived much too late to play a significant role anyway.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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1024MAK wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 3:41 pm
At the time of the launch of the ZX Spectrum, all video monitors and TVs were CRT technology. LCDs were only used in watches, clocks, calculators, handheld computers, handheld game machines and some expensive portable computers. So a low cost portable CRT may have appeared to be a good idea.
He was a bit odd as an inventor. He'd pursue the wrong track in a stubborn manner. The CRT's were a demonstration of this. The Japanese had LCD screens but he thought his CRT's were better. Microdrives were another example of this. Floppies expensive but falling in price fast and Clive goes out and re-invents the 8 track!

The interviews he did about the MSX were also quite telling. He argued that people didn't want standardisation and it would limit technology. OK so the MSX failed but standardisation is indeed what we got. Just not at that point.

That pursuit of the wrong idea at all costs is what did for Sinclair. The C5, wafer scale integration, micro drives etc.

Sinclair hitting on the computer revolution was foresight but it then bankrolled a load of daft projects. Of course companies need to take risks but Sinclair bet the entire farm on a series of projects that lost huge amounts of cash.

And tellingly, since then he hasn't had any high profiles successes despite pushing ideas. The truly great inventors/creators keep on producing new and innovative stuff that sells. What we looking at with Clive? The Zike? The Z88?
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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PeteProdge wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:48 pm If Sir Clive Sinclair hadn't existed, would the British home computing scene in the 1980s be a straight-up fight between Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC users? I'm sure it'd have been a bit more nuanced than that of course, but I do wonder if some of the 'second division' 8-bits would have had more visibility. MSX or Acorn maybe?
As you'll have seen from my coverage of PCN, the Speccy is pretty much top dog in the sales charts every week for the magazines entire run. Without it what would have happened?

Well the C64 would have probably have been top. It's hard on the heels of the 64 most weeks. Acorn? Well that depends on if they had still decided to release the Elk and if it hadn't be crushed by being late and the might of the Spectrum.

Amstrad? They would have still have released the CPC. You may have seen the Dragon and Oric hanging on for longer. The cost reduced Atari 8 bits may have gained more traction as well.

MSX, not sure. It was a mess of a launch with a load of consumer confusion around it. Never really gained traction.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Ralf wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:59 am
Where is Commodore today? Where is Atari? Where is Amstrad?
Amstrad the only company that continued to produce electronics and Alan Sugar sold up at a time of his choosing (IIRC his 60th birthday) and eventually it was all merged into Sky. Today they are now a division of Sky working a few doors down from the old Amstrad HQ which is now a hotel.

Nobody lost their job, nobody went bust. Like it or not they were the last guys left standing.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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@chinnyhill10, so tell us who you know of that has managed at least three good inventions say within the last 50 years or so.

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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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1024MAK wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:26 pm

Sinclair found itself in a situation where it had a huge amount of money tied up in stock piled up in warehouses, with not enough money coming in to pay the large bills that were becoming due. Before the slowdown, this had not been a problem, as cash from sales always meant that there was money in the bank. Acorn also found itself with similar problems. It had stockpiles of Electons it could not sell in any quantity, but got funding from (and eventually bought by) Olivetti.


So it was not just Clive Sinclair's other projects that took down the business. Part of it was that running a business that relied on expected future sales, that was partly seasonal, then a change in demand, was always going to be difficult.
Alot of emphasis is put on Sinclair and Acorn having warehouses full of computers at Xmas '85 . There's a very pertinent point in the Amstrad Story book where Dixons are trying to tap up Amstrad for cheap CPC's because they claim they knew Amstrad had lots of unsold stock.

In fact the Amstrad warehouse was empty because Sugar had made sure he wasn't reliant on the domestic market from day 1. In fact the biggest problem was France and Spain selling machines as fast as they could be got into the country. Dixons kept ringing and they were assuming Sugar was playing hard ball but he just had no stock.

So its not so much the state of the market but just being a bit crap at business that did for Sinclair and Acorn.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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1024MAK wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:18 pm @chinnyhill10, so tell us who you know of that has managed at least three good inventions say within the last 50 years or so.

Mark
Sinclair is as much a person as a brand name. Apple seem to be doing nicely as are Dyson. Both are run by the same kind of 'visionaries' that Sinclair was (or at least Apple was until Jobs died).

And there is Musk of course. Depends on if he ends up in the same hole Sinclair did.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Yes, I know Amstrad did alright and indeed prospered. It has to be said that Alan Suger was a far better business man than anyone else in the U.K. home computer market. And I like the CPC machines (well designed and nice to use). But this thread is about Sinclair. No one is saying that Amstrad were bad or anything like that. So can we move on from talking about Amstrad...

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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Despite the hatchet job some people are dishing out based on 20/20 hindsight, Sir Clive will always be a hero for me. He changed my life when I was 13 years old, and went on to change the world, in almost every way for the better. He's done so without doing a great deal of harm to anyone, and not many multimillionaire businessmen can claim that.

I met him once and shook his hand. Curmudgeonly old bugger he was, and I wouldn't rush to meet him again. Still an absolute legend though.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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1024MAK wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:30 pm So can we move on from talking about Amstrad...

Mark
It's inherently linked though because you have the one example of a company that made the right decisions, that made the right calls.

We can sit here pontificating but throughout this period all you have to do is look at 1 - Company X who later went under did Y. 2- Amstrad did Z. It's not rocket science really. Even the computer press at the time were remarking on it.

But I'll butt out now. Forums aren't my forte.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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chinnyhill10 wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:07 pm
PeteProdge wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:48 pm If Sir Clive Sinclair hadn't existed, would the British home computing scene in the 1980s be a straight-up fight between Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC users? I'm sure it'd have been a bit more nuanced than that of course, but I do wonder if some of the 'second division' 8-bits would have had more visibility. MSX or Acorn maybe?
As you'll have seen from my coverage of PCN, the Speccy is pretty much top dog in the sales charts every week for the magazines entire run. Without it what would have happened?

Well the C64 would have probably have been top.
It's tough to say that though as the C64 had a much higher price-point. The C64 outdoes the Speccy on quite a few things, but the low price-point of the Spectrum is why it became top dog out of the 8-bits.

In a Sinclair-less universe, I dare say the Amstrad CPC would have leapfrogged the Commodore 64, albeit marginally. For third place? You brought up the Atari 8-bit range. I think that would be very closely followed by the MSX and the Acorn Electron.
chinnyhill10 wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:07 pmIt's hard on the heels of the 64 most weeks. Acorn? Well that depends on if they had still decided to release the Elk and if it hadn't be crushed by being late and the might of the Spectrum.
The Acorn Electron could have been a huge contender. Alas, even in the Sinclair-less world, I don't think it would have gone much further than the Dragon 32. Come to think of it, its commercial lifespan wasn't much more than the 16K Spectrum.
chinnyhill10 wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:07 pmAmstrad? They would have still have released the CPC.
Definitely. And the stack-it-high-pile-it-cheap ethos of Sir Alan would have made it the 'Spectrum' of the day. I dare say 60% of this forum would be Amstrad CPC users in those circumstances.
chinnyhill10 wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:07 pmYou may have seen the Dragon and Oric hanging on for longer. The cost reduced Atari 8 bits may have gained more traction as well.
Depending on the politics, yeah, the Atari computers could have punched above their weight.
chinnyhill10 wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:07 pmMSX, not sure. It was a mess of a launch with a load of consumer confusion around it. Never really gained traction.
I always see it as the fourth major 8-bit of the European home computer scene. There was stuff out for it into the late eighties, while yer Acorn and Atari 8-bits had no chances of seeing a new game released.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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chinnyhill10 wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:04 pmSinclair hitting on the computer revolution was foresight but it then bankrolled a load of daft projects.
I think [mention]chinnyhill10[/mention] summarises it well here. Sinclair Research was generally successful in democratising existing technologies. It was good at cutting corners and reducing costs, sometimes by using cheap components, sometimes by design decisions that reduced functionality by much less than they reduced cost. The ZX80, ZX81 and Spectrum were all cases of this. Sinclair Radionics' efforts in calculators (and even the digital watch) were also similar and generally successful.

Where Sinclair Research pretty much invariably came unstuck was in developing new technologies: Microdrives, CRTs, WSI, etc. They were all failures. I don't know if they consumed a lot of cash as [mention]chinnyhill10[/mention] suggests, but they must have consumed some resources that would have been better deployed on a new consumer computer (as [mention]1024MAK[/mention] has said).

When it came to "inventing", Sinclair Research was actually pretty hopeless. I think the main problem was eccentric technology choices (not just in hindsight; most were seen as baffling at time). But I also question whether Sinclair Research had the resources to pull these projects off, anyway. It wasn't quite as small as [mention]Ralf[/mention] suggested (Wikipedia suggests a 1985 headcount of 140, not 30), but his point about its small scale still stands. Even at the peak in 1985, it had roughly one tenth of Apple's revenue. (That said, if it were still one tenth of Apple's size today, it would be one of Europe's largest technology companies.)
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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And to reply to [mention]Alessandro[/mention]'s points:
Alessandro wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:48 am
Rorthron wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:06 am It's fair also to give Clive Sinclair credit; he clearly must have also been involved.
I think that's as generic a statement as, say, "Winston Churchill must have been involved in Britain's victory in World War II".
Yes, it was deliberately a generic statement. I was raising the question of what Clive Sinclair's involvement was. That is unknown to us. To have started the discussion with a specific presumption of his role would have been question begging.

Your assumption about Clive Sinclair 's role may well be correct, but we don't know. I am just conscious that at the time Clive Sinclair often seemed to be portrayed almost as the single-handed architect of the ZX81 and Spectrum. I think some of the credit should go to others. But you might be right that he deserves the lion's share.

Really, though, I don't think this is the main issue. The biggest criticisms of Clive Sinclair are not in the successes with the ZX80, ZX81 and Spectrum, but in the calamitous other projects I mentioned, and, as others have noted, financial management mistakes at Sinclair Research.
Alessandro wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:48 am I won't say the concept of wafer scale integration has entirely turned to dust, at least as far as data storage is concerned. In an interview published on Your Computer, November 1987, Sinclair predicted that solid state would dominate over conventional hard disks. 30 years and more later we are witnessing just that.
That has nothing to do with wafer-scale integration; it's down to NAND flash. Clive Sinclair did nothing to deliver that.

Also he may have made a prediction, but that isn't a huge contribution, especially as it was an obvious extrapolation of Moore's Law that has been made by very many people. I predict that one day there will be more EVs on the road than internal combustion engine vehicles, one day the majority of computing will be done in the cloud, one day quantum computing will be widespread. If any of those turn out to be true, I'm happy to come back to collect any applause/prizes/knighthoods. ;)
Alessandro wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:48 am Research as recent as 2016 has also revived the idea of WSI in the field of artificial intelligence.
Yes, 30 years on, still nothing has happened!
Alessandro wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:48 am The QL was meant to be a "consumer" computer in a certain sense, aimed at small enterprises and professionals.
I think this contradictory. Small enterprises and professionals are not the same as consumers. The QL was meant as a business computer, not a consumer one.

The QL is an interesting case. It falls between the two categories I mentioned in my last post: it democratised existing technologies and used new ones (Microdrives). It's also not clear to me if it just failed because of worse execution than the ZX computers, or because it was a business computer where expectations (eg for reliability, service and support) were higher than Sinclair was used to offering.

(Sorry if this sounds argumentative; I'm enjoying this discussion.)
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

Post by Alessandro »

Rorthron wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 3:55 am Also he may have made a prediction, but that isn't a huge contribution, especially as it was an obvious extrapolation of Moore's Law that has been made by very many people. I predict that one day there will be more EVs on the road than internal combustion engine vehicles, one day the majority of computing will be done in the cloud, one day quantum computing will be widespread. If any of those turn out to be true, I'm happy to come back to collect any applause/prizes/knighthoods. ;)
I don't think this is a fair comparison. Electric vehicles, cloud computing and quantum computers have been around for years by now, are available to the general public (yes, even quantum computers if we take the IBM Q Experience into account), and from what the trends seem to be nowadays, it can be predicted with a good margin of success that in about 10 years or even less they will be prevalent. Nothing of this could be said of solid state data storage in 1987. In addition to that, Sinclair received his knighthood for industrial merits (at least that's what the Italian press reported at the time), not for his reflections on the future.
Rorthron wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 3:55 am Yes, 30 years on, still nothing has happened!
I would not dismiss a recent, well-documented research as "nothing". Moreover, Sinclair would not be the only one to have envisioned technological advancements unfeasible at the time they were imagined. Leonardo da Vinci designed machines that could not be made into real items with 15th century technology, and it took four or five centuries to do that. Even the 3-inches mini-TV was not so far-fetched as an idea as it might seem, considering that nowadays people watch videos and TV live broadcast on their cell phones, which screens are often not so much larger. Of course they have LCD/LED screens, but in 1978 LCD technology did not allow for such an employ, and it was not as clear as today that such smaller cathode ray tubes would not yield enough image quality to justify their cost to the final user. Pretty much the same could be said for the C5, although it was a much braver attempt at a new product than the mini-TV. A much simpler, down-to-earth electric bike would arguably have been a good deal more successful than it was.
Rorthron wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 3:55 am I think this contradictory. Small enterprises and professionals are not the same as consumers. The QL was meant as a business computer, not a consumer one.
I believe you are mistakenly assuming an equivalence between "consumer goods" and "lower end of the market". In marketing science and socioeconomics, professionals and small entrepreneurs are consumers as well as everyone else. A consumer product is any product that an individual purchases on the market to satisfy a certain need. A QL and a Spectrum were consumer goods exactly in the same terms as, say, a Pentax 645Z and a Canon EOS 1300D are. They basically do the same things but are aimed at different segments of the market, i.e. consumers with different needs.

Apart from this, I also believe the whole picture remains unknown to us. At the cost of repeating myself, I'll say it again: my perception is that, with a lesser ego and a more cautious, gradual approach into researching new technologies, Sinclair would have produced more goods and establish a solid brand, avoiding the rapid downfall we all know about. Ultimately however, in the great game of globalized markets, he would have been swallowed by a bigger fish. He simply would have been unable to compete with the large corporations of today.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

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Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 am I don't think this is a fair comparison. Electric vehicles, cloud computing and quantum computers have been around for years by now... . Nothing of this could be said of solid state data storage in 1987.
I think it's an entirely fair comparison. Solid-state storage technologies have existed since the 1960s. Moore's Law was first formulated in 1965.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 amIn addition to that, Sinclair received his knighthood for industrial merits... not for his reflections on the future.
I know. I never suggested otherwise.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 amI would not dismiss a recent, well-documented research as "nothing".
You're right. It's not "nothing". But after 30 years, we have... a paper. It's a paltry return.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 amMoreover, Sinclair would not be the only one to have envisioned technological advancements unfeasible at the time they were imagined. Leonardo da Vinci designed machines that could not be made into real items with 15th century technology, and it took four or five centuries to do that.
He wasn't the first to speculate on these advances (or even close to the first), and he didn't contribute directly to their realisation. This isn't in my view a very good argument for his greatness. I actually think you are underselling his impact on the industry!
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 amI believe you are mistakenly assuming an equivalence between "consumer goods" and "low end of the market".
I really don't think I am. The distinction between consumer, SME, enterprise is subjective, but pretty well established in the technology industry. I believe the QL was generally portrayed as a "business" computer. See The Register's excellent article, which states, for example, it was originally intended for sale to ICL:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.ther ... nclair_ql/
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 amApart from this, I also believe the whole picture remains unknown to us.
Agreed!
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

Post by Pegaz »

Sinclair has his place in computer history, no doubt.
I dont know him personally and cant judge him as a person.
One thing is certain, I've always been a Spectrum fan, but that doesnt mean I have to be Klive Sinclair fan, too.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

Post by Alessandro »

Rorthron wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:17 pm I think it's an entirely fair comparison. Solid-state storage technologies have existed since the 1960s. Moore's Law was first formulated in 1965.
I think not. Again, you are comparing technology available to today's average user to something that was maybe conceived, yet unavailable in 1987.
Rorthron wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:17 pm I know. I never suggested otherwise.
To be honest your answer suggested otherwise to me ("If any of those turn out to be true" etc.).
Rorthron wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:17 pm You're right. It's not "nothing". But after 30 years, we have... a paper. It's a paltry return.
Again, I wouldn't call a "paltry return" a single example of a general rise of interest in a technology, which could be (I guess it in my ignorance) much more at hand now than it was 30 years ago. But to quote Keynes, "in the long run we are all dead" :twisted:
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 am He wasn't the first to speculate on these advances (or even close to the first)
I am not stating Sinclair was a genius or a hero or anyhing like that, but the way you depict him, I get the impression that you make him look like a buffoon incapable of doing anything but exploiting other people's ideas and efforts and produce outlandish statements, which seems unfair (to put it mildly) to me.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 am , and he didn't contribute directly to their realisation.
The C5, mini-TV etc. didn't come out of thin air. He did contribute directly to them, at least unless you consider "direct" contribution putting pieces together. Yes they were either perceived too expensive for the consumer target they were aimed at (the mini-TV) or affected by design faults (the electric tricycle), but he was the driving force behind all of this. He didn't just sit on a couch watching technicians and designers do their work.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 am This isn't in my view a very good argument for his greatness. I actually think you are underselling his impact on the industry!
Again, I am not stating Sinclair was "great". And I am not underselling anything. I even remembered that he was knighted for industrial merits! If that's not a recognition of an impact, I don't know what else could it be.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 am I really don't think I am. The distinction between consumer, SME, enterprise is subjective, but pretty well established in the technology industry. I believe the QL was generally portrayed as a "business" computer.
What you call "subjective" is well established in socieconomics and marketing science. "Business", "consumer" etc. are labels meant to classify individuals according to their specific needs (real or not). Please have a look at this essay for a better insight on the meaning of "consumer goods". And everyone could walk into a shop and purchase a QL if they wanted to.
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Re: Clive Sinclair: hero or zero?

Post by Rorthron »

Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:08 pmAgain, you are comparing technology available to today's average user to something that was maybe conceived, yet unavailable in 1987.
I am afraid I don't understand your point here. What are you referring to?
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:08 pmI get the impression that you make him look like a buffoon incapable of doing anything but exploiting other people's ideas and efforts and produce outlandish statements, which seems unfair (to put it mildly) to me.
That is very clearly not at all what I have said. My statements have been anything but "outlandish", and your accusation is quite unreasonable and unnecessary.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:08 pmThe C5, mini-TV etc. didn't come out of thin air. He did contribute directly to them, at least unless you consider "direct" contribution putting pieces together. Yes they were either perceived too expensive for the consumer target they were aimed at (the mini-TV) or affected by design faults (the electric tricycle), but he was the driving force behind all of this. He didn't just sit on a couch watching technicians and designers do their work.
My statement was not about the C5, portable TV, etc. It was about SSDs, which Clive Sinclair did not directly contribute to.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:08 pmI even remembered that he was knighted for industrial merits! If that's not a recognition of an impact, I don't know what else could it be.
I really don't think knighthoods settle anything very much.
Alessandro wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:14 am What you call "subjective" is well established in socieconomics and marketing science. "Business", "consumer" etc. are labels meant to classify individuals according to their specific needs (real or not). Please have a look at this essay for a better insight on the meaning of "consumer goods". And everyone could walk into a shop and purchase a QL if they wanted to.
What I am calling "subjective" is something that is subjective. You are quite wrong if you are saying such terms are objective.
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