Interview with Clive Sinclair autumn 1981

This is a copy of a September 1981 interview Duncan Scot of the magazine Your Computer had with Clive Sinclair. It reveals some often overlooked facts by other sources about Clive Sinclair, like the CCTA. He is also hinting a new machine, which would be the ZX Spectrum, but doesn't name it, nor giving any specifications.

I took the PDF source of the magazine, extracted the text and then corrected it as good as I could.

He is one of the few makers of personal computers in Britain whose name is known to millions. Many admire him for his inventiveness: some distrust the ephemeral quality of many of his products which, however well designed, are launched on a market which is increasingly resentful of poor reliability. He talks to Duncan Scot.

CLIVE SINCLAIR started business by making hobby electronic kits and scientific instruments but is better known for his breakthroughs in consumer electronics products. His achievements include the first pocket calculator — so successful that at one time his company was Europe's largest manufacturer of calculators. He also created the world's first electronic watch, the Black Watch, which proved the enormous potential demand for such a product. The watch was, however, so dogged by production failures and apparently poor quality control that it was quickly withdrawn from the market — then the foreign competition stepped in. He made Microvision, the first almost pocket-sized television, now sold by the National Enterprise this year he Board. Earlier announced a new breakthrough with the first flat-screen television, due to go into production next year. He is now working on an electric car and is studying economics at King's College, Cambridge, in the hope of testing some of his ideas about job creation.

Sinclair's breakthrough into the personal-computer market occurred in February 1980 with the launch of the ZX-80 which quickly became the world's largest-selling computer. Earlier this year, he followed it with the even less expensive and far more powerful ZX-81.

Clive Sinclair was recently appointed the chairman of British Alensa, a lodge which believes that intelligence can be measured and quantified. "Surely IQ is the definition of intelligence", says Sinclair. "There is no doubt that whatever it is that intelligence tests are measuring, ii selects people I find a sight easier to get on with than the average".Sinclair has had no formal training in any of the subjects he has worked in: "I taught myself electronics at school from textbooks. When I left school in 1958, I chose not to go to university because most of them only offered electrical engineering and I had no desire for such a broadly-based course.

"I had written for the magazine Practical Wireless while I was still at school. So when they advertised a job, I joined. The title was editorial assistant but dog's-body was what it was. There was an editor, an assistant editor and me. The editor became very ill and retired so the assistant editor stepped into his shoes and promptly had a nervous break-down at the thought of having to work with the great FJ Cams who had started the magazine. I was left running it on my own — it took about two days a week. "As a result, I was offered the job of running a little publishing firm called Berners. I did this for three years while I worked towards making a transistor-radio kit. Transistor radios were starting to enter the market. The Japanese were just beginning to become a force to be reckoned with but the import controls did not allow them into the country.

"I tried to raise funds: I, in fact, persuaded a company to back me and I left my job but they got cold feel and it fell through. I looked around for money for about nine months doing some freelance writing. I took another job and started practising electronics in my spare time until it was going well enough to support me.

"The first thing I did was to buy transistor components from Plessey. It was making transistors for the computer industry and had very tight specifications. It had many transistors which were perfectly good but did not meet that particular specification so I bought, tested, graded and sold them. "The next idea was an amplifier kit, followed shortly by a radio kit. Those products went reasonably well and we moved into stereo kits. I went into kits because as a mail-order business, I could sell them without much capital. It put us firmly into the hobby market. "We had some very innovatory designs from the technology point of view, such as a new type of tuner. We started to sell ready-built stereos to the shops and that developed into a medium-sized business which took us through to 1972 when we launched the first pocket calculator. "The pocket calculator was the first one in the world. Its success was so great that its sales totally over shadowed the stereo business. At the same time, we moved into making instruments.

"The calculator market was very interesting; there was no precedent. When we started, calculators were sold exclusively through ofTicc- equipment shops. Although we sold some to those shops, I believed that that was the wrong kind of outlet. In principle, we needed mass-merchandising so we approached Boots. It seemed an unlikely choice at the time, but Boots had a very large chain. We also approached W H Smith.

"The breakthrough into calculators occurred because two or three companies more or less at the same time had developed single chips which contained most of the logic for a calculator. You could only make a calculator of a large size because the power consumption was far too high. "What we did was to develop special circuitry which effectively switched the calculator chip on and off in a way which had not been intended in the design. It was effectively off for most of the time but the charges on the various devices remained until they were switched on again and so the data was retained. That meant we gained a power saving of 10 Or 20 to one. "The problem we faced eventually was that the Japanese released little liquid-crystal machines. At one time, we were planning a diverse machine which used liquid crystals but to drive them, you need CMOS chips and those were made only in Japan. Whereas when the Americans had the lead in calculator chips they were prepared to supply to us, the Japanese were only willing to supply last year's chips. They support their own manufacturers. "That was one problem; the other was that the calculator business became fiercely competitive for everyone; everyone was selling at a loss. The big companies could afford to sell at a loss; we couldn't as it was our main business. "Our instrument business was working in parallel. Although it was less spectacular as far as the public was concerned, it grew to be a reasonably substantial business.

"Then we unveiled the Black Watch. That was technically very exciting. We were the first people in the world to put all the electronics of a watch on a single chip. Originally, we worked with Mullards but it backed out of the program — it couldn't sec a future in electronic watches. So we turned to ITT to make the chip. We hit technical snags in production. That was disastrous for us as we had the product, created the demand and couldn't deliver. We suddenly discovered that static electricity could switch the chip. "We hadn't discovered it before because by sheer chance, all the time we were making the pilot units, the humidity had been reasonable and so there were no static problems. By the time we launched, the humidity was very low and people were having electric shocks when they walk across carpets and damaged their watches. "There were other production problems which we couldn't solve and we never produced the yield we needed. The problems of the Black Watch fell at the end of the 10 years we had been developing our pocket-television technology — which was an enormous investment for us.

"On top of that, we had the flat-television tube project — jointly financed by us and the National Research and Development Council. We had the choice of either reducing the size of the company and dropping that project or seeking outside finance. I decided to go to the National Enterprise Board because the project was so dear to me. "We were unsuccessful. When Lord Ryder was the chairman, he backed us because of the television project. He left and the new people decided that the future lay with our instruments not with consumer electronics. They didn't think we could compete with the Japanese. Eventually we split up.

'We were developing a personal computer at the NEB, the Newbrain, but they decided we couldn't afford it and so that was pushed out to Newbury, I don't know what has happened to it, but it has not seen the light of day. It as about the same time that Chris Curry, who had been running science at Cambridge, left to start Arcon.

"We thought about making the ZX-80 in August the year before last. We needed a product and that was it. Clearly I had anticipated the success of the ZX-80 because we ordered a 100,000 parts - somewhat unusual in the computer business.

[...]

"As of what type of people have bought them, there is a reasonably broad spectrum. We have a higher percentages from papers like the Observer and the Sunday Times but higher numbers, because of higher circulation, from papers like the Sun and so on. The laigest age group is about 30. People tend to spend ail unbelievable number of hours with them when they receive them. It is surprising how people have actually used them to serious purpose. The ZX-80 was very much a stepping stone to the ZX-81. I think the ZX-8I has a long life. Next time we release a machine, it will not be a replacement but another kind of machine. "There is a point where there is no saving to be made: in going from the ZX-80 to the ZX-81, we have gone from 22 chips down to four There isn't much prospect of having even fewer chips because you need some capability to update and so on. By trying to put it all on one chip, you rule out that possibility. What I do see is that more functions will be available".

Sinclair on the BBC computer literacy project

"There has been a certain amount of controversy about the decision of the BBC to have a microcomputer built under contract to promote with its computer-literacy scheme which starts on BBC TV next January. "I have no objection to the contract going to Acorn", says Sinclair. "We have an argument with the BBC on several grounds, first the way in which it conducted the affair; secondly, selling a product anyway and thirdly, ignoring the industry.

"When you have a company like ours, which is easily dominating the whole of Europe in personal computers, we believe we have done a very important job in popularising computers. It is a real disappointment to have your own national broadcasting corporation completely ignore you. "What the BBC is doing, it is doing badly and it is damaging the whole progress of computers in this country. We have put a new version of Basic into our machines. It has been highly praised in the U.K. and its editing abroad, because of facilities. We developed into it features such as single-keyword entry. None of that is in the BBC version. "Even if the BBC uses another computer, ignore is silly progress. What it has offered is Microsoft Basic. If we had wanted to use Microsoftware, we could have bought it off the shelf for $10,000 and saved ourselves a small fortune — really it is disheartening".

Sinclair is also dismissive about Government plans to promote computing. "The Government has it so wrong. Frankly, they are so bad at it, it would be better if they left it alone. Fine, they should be doing things for the computer market, but this recent Department of Industry scheme is so peculiar. We were not even talked to. "We went to them when they told us about the scheme and asked what we had done wrong. They said you need CCTA approval. We went to the CCTA and they said n is not our job to approve machines. The BBC machinc does not have CCTA approval nor could it obtain CCTA for it. The truth of the matter was that the Department of Industry had no idea whatsoever.

"What is vital is that we improve the way of funding businesses. The changes I have seen while I have been in business have been striking. We must be bolder. Until Johnny goes to the careers master and the careers master says: Are you considering becoming an entrepreneur? we have not really won".

Nor does Sinclair accept that his record of eventual failures might have deterred the BBC and the Government from becoming involved: "That's not the record into really. We certainly got financial difficulties over the Black Watch and we went to the NEB — but that was after 15 years of unbroken commercial success. Having gone to the NEB and having found that it was a mistake, we rescued the thing smoothly, smartly and we are a highly profitable business again. "We know exactly why we were forced out of the calculator business, and one of the reasons was a question of scale. I won't let the Japanese win for that reason again. We are not holding an umbrella over their heads on price, nor are we allowing them — in so far as it is possible and I think it is totally possible — have a lead over us in any technical area. "If you think I will make the same mistake twice you are wrong because I haven't yet. I make mistakes, everyone does, but I never make them twice".