Sir Clive Sinclair

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In 1979 Clive Sinclair, British inventor of the pocket calculator, frustrated by the lack of home investment in his project,the electric car, also opposes former assistant Chris Curry's belief that he can successfully market a micro-chip for a home computer. A parting of the ways sees Curry, in partnership with the Austrian Hermann Hauser and using whizz kid Cambridge students, set up his own, rival firm to Sinclair Radionics, Acorn. Acorn beat Sinclair to a lucrative contract supplying the BBC with machines for a computer series. From here on it is a battle for supremacy to gain the upper hand in the domestic market.

The Rubber Keyed Wonder tells the story of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. This film goes into all the finer details of how and why the ZX Spectrum was created, what impact the computer had as well as the various versions that followed right the way through to the latest iteration of the system with the ZX Spectrum Next.

In 1985 Sir Clive Sinclair, possibly one of the UKs most famous inventors and innovators of recent generations, launched the Sinclair C5 electric vehicle on a wintery morning to a large press fanfare at Alexandra Palace in London. Sir Clive who was well known for his prior consumer technological triumphs such as the first LED electronic pocket calculator, miniature televisions, and the famous home computers the ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum (which many people cite as being the catalyst of the UK computer and software industry in the 1980s, and which many current programmers still quote as the start point of their careers). Sadly, that launch was not only the beginning, but also the start of the end of the ill-fated electric vehicle. This is that story.