Thank you

In the summer of 1980, it's fair to say I didn't have any great idea what I wanted to do with my life.  Which was OK I guess - I was only 12, after all - but I was starting to think that maybe I should have some vague inkling.  I was doing fine academically, but I was at a school that I knew I was only going to be at for one more year before transferring out.  This made the usual minefield of friendships even trickier to navigate and I most definitely hadn't found "my crowd" - or was even clear that such a thing existed.  

Then Mr Miles (probably the only teacher whose name I can remember from that school) announced he'd bought a ZX80 (retailing at £99.95, which was some money back in the day - but considerably cheaper than anything similar) and he was going to bring it in and start a computer club after school if anyone would be interested.  I'd heard of computers, but the idea of actually seeing one up close was impossible to resist, so I and a sizeable number of like-minded individuals (ah - so they did exist!) gathered in a tiny classroom to experience this incredibly small box being plugged into an incredibly large TV (because all TVs were incredibly large back then).  The number of people present meant that very little was actually done, or even visible but that wasn't important because I was instantly hooked.  The next week, the number of people was much reduced and Mr Miles split the club into two parts - the first half educational and the second half hands on with some games (and this was definitely the sensible order!).  Looking back at both the technical spec (1k RAM, 4k ROM) and that keyboard, the idea that we played games on it is astounding, but we gazed in wonder as asterisks flew around the screen.

Next year, just before I left the school, the club upgraded to a ZX81 (£69.95 - cheaper!), complete with 16k RAM pack (another £49.95) along with its famous wobble (for which our preferred solution was Blu-tack!).  It was amazing to see the technological progress that both time and extra memory provided - there were several asterisks flying around the screen now!  But whilst the games were fun, it was the introduction to BASIC which I look back on with most appreciation and fondness now - the idea that you could break down a problem into steps and make something do the work for you was simply incredible to me at the time.

The next step to be taken was obviously for me to get a computer of my own - and the mere announcement of the forthcoming release of the ZX Spectrum was enough to convince me that was the one for me, so we sent off a cheque for £125 (I forget how much of that was my money and how much was kindly "lent" to me by my lovely, if not exactly comprehending, parents) and waited breathlessly for its exciting arrival.  And we waited.  And then we waited some more - it's fair to say that demand somewhat outstripped supply, but finally (once I'd given up greeting the postman every morning) it arrived!  And the rest, as they say, is history.  I loved that machine and learned so much using it - and played so many games on it as well!  And they really were a thing of beauty - Atic Atac and Jet Set Willy were both favourites, but Manic Miner has to be the most fondly remembered of the lot and the day I completed that was a particular source of pleasure and pride.  As an aside, Wikipedia reminds me that Manic Miner was the first Spectrum game with in-game music which was previously believed to be impossible - it's quite amazing what people achieved with very limited resources (particularly when you consider what is available now!)

The common thread to all these machines is obviously Sinclair Research and whilst our paths diverted when I upgraded to my also much loved BBC B machine, that company and the man behind it, Sir Clive Sinclair, hold a dear place in my heart and so I read the news of his death yesterday with both sadness and incredible gratitude for all that he achieved which enabled me to achieve all that I have (possibly not quite as much as him, but you have to remember I'm considerably lazier than he was).  His obituaries also reminded me that he invented the pocket calculator even though you just assume they've always existed - before everyone had phones with calculators on them, which means they no longer need to exist (except for kids to use in exams at school!)

So thank you Sir Clive - it's simply the truth to say you played a major part in my life, enabling me (and countless others) both to work out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do and providing me with the initial building blocks to start me down the road to achieving that.  And for that you have my eternal thanks.

Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (30 July 1940 – 16 September 2021)