Clive Sinclair
Quick facts
- Born
- July 30, 1940, Ealing, Middlesex, England
- Died
- September 16, 2021, London, England
Facts from Wikipedia’s “Clive Sinclair” page (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (30 July 1940 – 16 September 2021) was an English businessman and inventor. He was known for his works on consumer electronics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England. He invented many versions of pocket calculators including the first one in 1972.
Some of his creations include Sinclair Radionics Black Watch wristwatch, the Sinclair Vehicles C5 battery electric vehicle, and the Sinclair Research TV80 flatscreen CRT handheld television set.
Sinclair died from cancer in London on 16 September 2021 at the age of 81.
Written for younger readers
Clive Sinclair, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: Famous Inventors
Link to Clive Sinclair’s Wikipedia entry
Clive Sinclair was born July 30, 1940.
He was born in Ealing, England.
Did You Know?
- He was also behind the Sinclair personal computer.
- He invented the Micro Amplifier.
- He was knighted in 1983. Sinclair’s father and grandfather were engineers; both had been apprentices at the shipbuilders Vickers.
He went for holiday jobs at electronic companies.
Sinclair attended Boxgrove Preparatory School, excelling in mathematics. Sinclair had little interest in sports and found himself out of place at school.
At Solartron he inquired about the possibility of electrically propelled personal vehicles.
Bicycles, mopeds and cars did not offer personal electric transport. Lithium battery technology was not sufficiently developed.
The Sinclair C5.
It was a fared recumbent tricycle or velomobile with a battery electric motor.
He was ahead of his time. The Sinclair C5 predated escooters by several decades.
Whilst Sinclair had anticipated 100,000 C5’s would be sold in the first year, only 14,000 units were produced and 4,500 sold before the C5 line was terminated
Could the C5 have succeeded with lithium battery and appropriate infrastructure?
Escooters became popular.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Clive Sinclair” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.