Media File: 1982
Sinclair in the News

The Associated Press
November 12, 1982

Clive Sinclair: Making Big Sales With Small Computer

By JAMES PELTZ, AP Business Writer

Amid the explosion of personal computers, nowhere has the combustion been more intense than in sales of the under-$150 machines designed by a reserved Briton named Clive Sinclair.

His first wedge-shaped, 12-ounce computer, the ZX80, came out in early 1980 and Sinclair Research Ltd. sold 100,000 of them in a year. In March 1981 came the ZX81, a more advanced but similarly sized model that logged sales of 500,000 units by last August.

And this year Timex Corp., which manufactures the ZX81 in Scotland for Sinclair, agreed to build and market a machine similar to the ZX81 but with more memory, the Timex Sinclair 1000. Whereas the ZX81 has been available in the United States through mail-order only, the TS1000 is being sold directly through U.S. retail outlets at a suggested price of only $99.95. Sinclair also has a more advanced computer, the ZX Spectrum, that is sold in the United Kingdom and is slated for export early next year.

Combined, some 200,000 Sinclair computers are produced monthly.

But the man behind the success, a bearded and balding 42-year-old redhead, appears unimpressed by the popularity of his machines, perhaps because he has had his share of close calls with failure.

Indeed, Sinclair views success and failure as did Kipling: "I treat the two imposters both the same," he says.

In a recent interview during one of his several U.S. trips a year, Sinclair sketched how he manages his Cambridge, England-based firm of which he owns 95 percent. Slim, with silver-rimmed glasses and freckles creeping up his forehead, Sinclair answers questions quietly but briefly and is shy about expressing his feelings.

Success to him mainly is the "excitement of developing a product that's really new and which people really take to." Financial reward, he says, "is the means to the end," meaning development of new products, and work is under way for a "flat-screen" television and an electric car.

Sinclair Research posted revenue of about £27 million last year, he says, or about $45 million at current exchange rates. And revenue will be up this year, although he declines to be more specific.

Sinclair sees his job mainly as the firm's innovator. "My work is in the mind," he says and, while he may design his ideas on paper, much of a machine's final details are often drawn by an employee.

"Having got the ball rolling, the project under way, I monitor it on a weekly basis," Sinclair says. "I watch that side very closely. The other sides of the business I'm less close to, really. I'm not a particularly good manager, pe se. I'm not a 'hands-on' man."

Born in London, Sinclair learned basic electronics in school and at age 17 he went to work as a technical journalist.

Two years later he joined Mensa, which describes itself as an international association of intelligent people and which requires a high IQ score for membership. Sinclair, currently chairman of the British Mensa Society, downplays the membership as having any special significance, saying "it's a social thing" and simply gives him a chance to meet people.

In 1962 he founded his own company called Sinclair Radionics, whose first products included radio and amplifier kits that were sold by mail order.

Sinclair Radionics grew, and its product line expanded into hi-fidelity systems and electronic instruments. He married at age 22, had three children and moved from London to Cambridge in 1967.

Later that year Sinclair launched the $185 Executive, one of the first true pocket calculators, and with revenue rising, he invested heavily in other projects, mainly digital watches and a pocket TV.

But matters soured by 1975. A new digital wrist watch introduced that year, the Black Watch, ran into problems when Sinclair had difficulty getting sufficient supplies of a new computer chip used in the watch.

Revenue began turning down, yet other Sinclair projects were demanding substantial funds for development. By the end of its fiscal year ended April 1976, the firm was losing money.

Sinclair went to the government-financed National Enterprise Board for an injection of cash in late 1976. A pocket TV, with a two-inch screen, was unveiled in early 1977 and new calculators emerged the following year.

But by 1979 the board and Sinclair were falling apart. Published reports suggest the board was losing faith in Sinclair's ability to generate profitable products and that he was encouraged to concentrate on electronic instruments rather than consumer electronics.

In July 1979 the enterprise board and Sinclair split, with the board retaining the instrument business and Sinclair taking part of his research team to form Sinclair Research Ltd.