Creative Computing Magazine Interviews Clive Sinclair (1980)
This British inventor speaks about his ZX-80 computer system.
The British computer industry has some interesting characters. This interviewee is one of the biggest.
P.S. I picked this interview because the magazine cover was Christmas-themed.
Don’t forget to take advantage of the Black Friday - Happy Birthday sale.
by David Ahl
Clive Sinclair is the man behind the first mass pocket calculator, the first scientific calculator kit and, now, a mass-market computer. I talked to Clive while in London at the PCW show.
Ahl: How did you get started in the electronics business?
Sinclair: I started in 1962 when I first came to Sinclair Radionics. We were in the kit business with hi fi systems and pocket calculators, (we made the first pocket calculator which is on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York). From there we went into digital watches and TV sets and for a while we were linked with a government body in the U.K. At this point I left, as this arrangement did not work out too well. I took the same people with me and reformed the company as Sinclair Research Ltd. and launched the personal computer.
Ahl: Does Sinclair Radionics and its products still exist?
Sinclair: Only as a legal entity, but it doesn't trade.
Ahl: So effectively today your main product is ZX80?
Sinclair: That's right, but it's not our main research program. Our biggest research/development program is on flat screen television.
Ahl: Have you shown that at all? Or proved its capability?
Sinclair: Yes we have. We are at the stage where we have demonstrated it and will be doing so again later this year. We have pilot production and hope to shortly be at the next stage.
Ahl: What type of technology is used?
Sinclair: It is a flat screen Cathode Ray Tube.
Ahl: Does it have electron guns?
Sinclair: It has a conventional electron gun, but instead of the beam following a straight path, it bends to a right angle and it splits the screen.
Ahl: Is it monochrome or could it be color?
Sinclair: It is monochrome today, but eventually it will be color. We will pursue that.
Ahl: That sounds very interesting. Sharp had shown one about two years ago which provoked much interest in the electronics community but nothing ever came of it. Today it doesn't look like they are any closer to a commercial product than two years ago.
Sinclair: What Sharp showed was an early development model of vertical projection, which, novel as it was, was a long way from a commercial product. But that is not the case with ours. Ours gives a picture which is not simply as good as a conventional Cathode Ray Tube, but it is better, and all the snags have been ironed out.
Ahl: Do you anticipate that the price of this will be competitive with the existing technology?
Sinclair: Absolutely. There is no way we would introduce something which cost more than existing technology. Not only does this have more feature advantages, it has price advantages over conventional technology. But in order to achieve this and because conventional tubes are made in such vast numbers, the only way it can be competitive is to have very large scale production. That is why it will take quite some time before the tube emerges.
Ahl: About the ZX80; how long has that been in development?
Sinclair: It started in March 1979 and it was put on the market in February 1980.
Ahl: How many people were involved? It seems to be quite a breakthrough on many fronts. Did you have simultaneous projects going on to bring it to fruition? Or was it mainly you, or a small team of people?
Sinclair: There were very few people involved really. I had the original idea and some of the system ideas. Then there were about two or three engineers who were involved in the detail and design; one engineer in particular did the final design and one wrote the software.
Ahl: Some people look at it and conclude that it is no more than a larger computer scaled down to smaller dimensions, while others will look at it and think of it as one of those language translators with a little more capability. From glancing at the specifications and seeing it at the Consumer Electronics Show, I have the impression that it has much more capability than that and that it does not seem to be just a scaled down computer. What is your concept? How do you view the machine?
Sinclair: While the ZX80 is a true computer in every sense, without any inherent limitations, it obviously was restricted in performance in its minimum configuration. We wanted to sell at as low a price as we possibly could, a computer upon which people could start to learn, really seriously, how to break into computers and how to really learn what computers were about. Now that might be an end in itself for many of them, but these may be executives who want to understand computing so when they buy computers for their firms or talk to people about the use of computers in their firms, they do so from a knowledgeable standpoint and they don't feel awed by it. Equally, we see it as a very powerful aid for students wanting to learn computing. But at the same time it is expandable. We have just announced a Basic for it — which is more of a professional Basic than the original one and a 16K byte RAM pack for it at a very keen price, (around $ 100), so that it can be taken from the basic configuration to a really very powerful system at a very low cost. Hence our price will be somewhere around half the conventional competitions. I would make the point that in order to do this we have done everything inhouse, i.e., in the way of anything having to be specially done we had to write our own Basic because we wanted to achieve performance in the Basic as it wasn't available on the existing Basics.
Ahl: Is that Basic compatible with MicroSoft Basic or some other Basic on the market or has it got a lot of bells and whistles that make it incompatible with others?
Sinclair: It is not compatible. It is our own. We had to take that step in order to achieve the bells and whistles that you mentioned and have those features that we feel are important to our customers. In order to hit our cost goal we had to do a better packing job than had been done before. The ROM in our basic machine is just 4K bytes which contains everything — Basic, operating system, keyboard control and display I/O. Now there is no way we could have done all that with an off-the-shelf Basic. Furthermore, we then pack data into the RAM at least four times as tightly as anyone else. We would not have been able to do that unless we had our own Basic. Another thing that we wanted was keyword entries. You may have noticed that by pressing a certain key a keyword is entered. So there is very little for a non-typist to do. A lot of people are put off in the learning stages with having to type PRINT every time and abbreviations can be misleading. We felt this was very crucial and it is not included in standard Basics, so we had to choose to go away from the existing patterns.
Ahl: Pertaining to the marketing of the ZX80, do you anticipate selling it through computer stores, department stores, or other types of outlets or through direct-mail as you have done with some of your other products?
Sinclair: We are going to sell the computer by direct-mail in England and the U.S. There may come a time when store distribution is possible, but you can't really distribute to a store until you have a much better informed public. A very large mail-order campaign may help do that, so it may be possible later to distribute to stores.
Ahl: Many people buying computers today, particularly at this price level, are concerned with where or who can they go back to for service, particularly if they buy a machine by direct-mail.
Sinclair: There are two points there: the first involves the product, the second is who to come back to for service. We have a permanent office in the States and we stand behind our product at all times. We haven't seen anything but 1% or under 1% failure rate in the field in the U.K. It is a very reliable product so we haven't got a serious problem. We operate with service contract houses and this is all part of the guarantee of the product.
Ahl: Jumping back to the technical aspect of the ZX80, it appears that although now that it is designed for a power supply to be plugged into standard power, it could probably be battery operated and completely portable. Is this in your plans?
Sinclair: Yes it is. It has a very low power consumption and could certainly run for a reasonable time on batteries. Of course you need a battery T.V. set as well.
Ahl: What about other peripherals, floppy disk, mass storage, printers etc.? Are they in the works?
Sinclair: Yes they are, we have a floppy disk coming in about a month; the other items should be out the middle of next year.
Ahl: How do you feel about other alternative forms of mass storage? Some people have said that the bubble memory is coming down in price fast enough that it may in two or three years replace the floppy disk as a mass storage device. Do you think that's likely to happen?
Sinclair: The price projections we see from manufacturers over the next two or three years don't suggest that to me.
Ahl: What else would you like the world to know about you, the product, philosophy etc?
Sinclair: The philosophy of the company is very clear — to lead in technology. We've got a good start in this field and we plan to take as good a lead as we can. Some of the things we are developing, such as the flat TV screen, a truly portable system, etc. are coming along too. Clearly we think these are things we can do.
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