![]() ![]() To mitigate this was the Sinclair policy of exchanging faulty items immediately with no questions asked. This was to be a recurring problem for Sinclair, as also was poor quality control in the rush to meet orders. If a new product was very attractive, so many orders were received that production was overwhelmed and there were long delays in sending them out. Unfortunately, the down side to this business model was soon discovered. The products were miniaturised and highly innovative the advertisements for them were large and eye-catching they were sold by mail order, generally as kits and This was to be the pattern of Sinclair's electronics business. The Micro-amplifier was followed by the Sinclair Slimline micro radio, the smallest radio on the market at 2.75" x 1.625" x 0.625" The Sinclair Radionics office, with research, development, and marketing, was in Cambridge, with the kits being produced andĭespatched nearby by Cambridge Consultants Ltd., a contract research and development company. In late 1962 the first advertisements from Sinclair Radionics for a Micro-amplifier kit appeared. Useless, so Clive bought them up, tested them, re-named them, and sold them together with designs for their use. One of his tasks was to produce a comprehensive survey of the available semiconductors, which opened the doorįor him at all the semiconductor manufacturers.Īt one of the manufacturers, Clive discovered that there were tens of thousands of transistors available very cheaply because they were outside the manufacturer's published specification. Then got a job as technical editor with the journal Instrument Practice, for which he also wrote articles. ![]() Having found financial backing he left Babani's, only to have the backer get cold feet and withdraw. Shortly afterwards, in 1958, Bernard Babani enticed Clive away to run his technical publishing company, where Clive also wrote thirteen contructor's books by 1962.Ĭlive still had ambitions to form his own company, and had registered the company Sinclair Radionics in 1961. Realised that electronic components were very cheap if bought in thousands, and that large advertisements in the hobby electronics magazines would be eye-catching and bring in orders.įortunately, the magazine Practical Wireless advertised for an editorial assistant, which Clive applied for and got. While at school he had drawn up details in an exercise book of the Sinclair Micro Radio Kit, complete with costings to the last detail, including postage and packing. Man, and Clive showed the same business flair. Although he could have gone to university, he did not, reckoning that he could find out anything that he wanted to know by himself. While at school he wrote his first article for the magazine Practical Wireless which was published, and he went for holiday jobs in electronic companies.Ĭlive left school just before his eighteenth birthday. There is much more information about the Sinclair Executive in the Featured Hand-held Calculators section.īorn in 1940, Clive became intensely interested in mathematics and electronics at school, and designed his own electronicĬircuits. The unusual, Sinclair designed keyboard also contributes to the small size of the Executive, with the little rubber pips which press directly on the beryllium-copper contacts. Texas Instruments did not recommend operating in this way, but it allows the Executive to get about 20 hours continuous operation from 3 small mercury button cells. ![]() Power pulses lasting 1.7 microseconds are used, at a frequency of 200 KHz during calculations and 15KHz between each operation, reducing the power consumption to 25 to 30 However, ChrisĬurry and Jim Westwood at Sinclair Radionics, in Huntingdon, England, found that the power to the chip did not have to be on continuously, it could be pulsed and the internal capacitance of the chip would store enough electricalĬharge to keep it working till the next power pulse. ![]() Sinclair in his quest for miniaturisation, to produce a true pocket calculator, wanted to use button cells rather than normal batteries, but these would be drained in minutes by the chip and the LED display. This normally has a current consumption of about 300 mA which dictates that normal AA size batteries, or larger, need to be used to give a decent battery life. The first Sinclair Executive calculators used one of the standard calculator chips of the time, the Texas Instruments TMS1802. Clive Sinclair was an electronics genius and is noted for his miniature electronic products achieved by using very innovative designs. ![]()
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