One in the ear from
Clive Sinclair
(Daily Telegraph, 3 June 1997)
Tom Standage on a radio invented by Sir Clive
British inventor Sir Clive Sinclair has gone back to his
roots with his latest invention - the Sinclair
X1 Button Radio, the size of a 10p coin. The X1
weighs half an ounce and is worn in one ear. Tuning involves
pushing tiny buttons that "search" up and down the
VHF spectrum.
"It will enable you to listen to your favourite station
wherever you are, and so discreetly that even the person next
to you will be unaware that you are using it," says Sir
Clive. He talks of more new products in the pipeline, including
another radio, a cordless phone, and a new kind of portable
computer. "We've got some exciting new technology that's
quite radical in design. My feeling is that portable computers
at the moment are too much of a compromise, so we're looking
into ways of achieving a better balance between portability
and function," he says.
His first invention was a kit radio, the Micromatic,
launched in 1964, but Sinclair made his name in the Eighties
with the ZX series of personal
computers. So where did the X1's name come from?
"Just out the air really," he says. "I'm always
calling things X this and Z that, and it's the first of a
new range. Startling originality, isn't it?"
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