A digital watch that kept poor time and might explode. A keyboard that felt like typing on a corpse. A three-wheeled electric “car” that couldn’t power its way uphill. No successful products for nearly four decades. Why do the British remember inventor Clive Sinclair so fondly? His legendary, affordable personal computers—and his ability to see the future, if not grasp it.
Sinclair died September 16 in London at age 81 after living with cancer for a decade. Renowned across the United Kingdom and Europe in the early 1980s as the pioneer of low-cost computing, Sinclair also developed dozens of other products that came to market before their technology had ripened. He continued to work on projects until his final days, his daughter told the BBC.
The Economist devoted its cherished last page to remembering Sinclair, but in the U.S. his death received only spotty coverage. Technology and gaming publications such as The Verge and Kotaku took note, as did CNN. The Washington…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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