Clive Sinclair, the English entrepreneur and inventor who designed the ZX Spectrum computer and other very popular technological devices in the 1970s and 1980s, died in London. He was 81 and had been ill for some time.
The ZX Spectrum series from Sinclair Radionics, Sinclair’s company, allowed many people to have a computer at home at a time when electronic devices were still very expensive: millions were sold worldwide. In the early 1980s Sinclair also designed an electric vehicle, the Sinclair C5, which was a kind of three-wheeled scooter equipped with pedals, to be used in an almost lying position: it was not successful because it had a low range, it did not reach high speeds and it didn’t work well uphill. The C5 flop caused Sinclair a lot of financial problems.
