Sir Clive Sinclair, a pioneer of the 1980's home computing era, died today aged 81.
Famous for the Sinclair digital watch and Sinclair calculator, in the 1970's, he became a household name when he brought affordable home computing to the people globally.
He is behind the Zilog Z80 based Sinclair ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum 16K, ZX Spectrum 48K , ZX Spectrum+ 48K, ZX Spectrum 128K, ZX Spectrum +2,, ZX Spectrum +2A, ZX Spectrum +3 and the Motorola 68000 based QL. In the US, there was the Timex 1000 & Timex 2068, both of which NASA have used in space for experiment monitoring.
Many of todays top software & electronics engineers cut their coding teeth on Sinclair computers as kids.
In the UK & Europe, the ZX Spectrum 48K proved to be more popular than the Commodore C64, due to it's superior, faster Z80 processor and larger user memory.