Sinclair and the 'Sunrise' Technology: The Deconstruction of a Myth (12 page)

As we have seen from the MK14 saga, Sinclair has never been particularly interested in the machines that made him a millionaire. Nevertheless, it is still easy to forget that it was only by default that computers - for many the quintessential emblem of new-age technology - became a part of Sinclair’s vision of the future. As a result, one of the incidental problems plaguing any attempt to chronicle the development of the Sinclair companies is that the man himself assumes little more than a cameo role in the creation of the products with which he is popularly associated. One of the most consistent characteristics of Sir Clive’s business career is that he has allowed his personal obsessions to determine corporate strategy, rather than making any serious attempt to address consumer demand. Norman Hewett’s assessment of Sinclair’s approach to his market during the Radionics era is equally applicable to subsequent developments at Sinclair Research:

Marketing-wise, the situation was quite extraordinary, in that I tried tactfully to inquire how we knew what the customers wanted, and who, indeed, the customers were supposed to be! This was greeted by a very marked lack of enthusiasm by Clive, who was quite convinced, and is to this day, that he alone knows what the customers want. And that what they will want is ingenious, and difficult to make, by definition. (Interview, 16 October 1985.)

Hewett’s view of Sinclair’s attitude to market demand is one of the few plausible explanations of Sinclair’s obsessional preoccupation with commercially dubious projects such as the flat-screen television and the electric car. Although it’s tempting to consider the cost of such an approach solely in terms of the millions sunk into fruitless research, at least as important is its disastrous effect on the formulation of strategic priorities for the companies. Because of Sinclair’s lack of interest in home-computer products, in the post-Radionics era, there has been a tendency within his companies to neglect the sole area of the consumer electronics market in which he managed to establish a significant market lead.

Every profile of Clive Sinclair contains a reference to the man’s determination and drive. In the spring of 1979, when Sinclair realized that it was only a matter of time before he and Radionics parted company, it is unlikely that Sinclair was particularly concerned about losing a company that he had built up from scratch. His companies are simply a means to an end, and in 1979 the goal in question was still the success and public acceptance of the miniature television, just as it had been when he first approached the NEB. The loss of Radionics simply amounted to a cessation of the funds required for the realization of his dream. Friends and commentators alike seem to agree that Sinclair has little interest in the acquisition of wealth for its own sake. PCW’s Dave Tebbutt, a personal friend of Sir Clive, is adamant that while he will spend - and spend lavishly - if there’s money around, wealth becomes an issue for Sinclair only when its absence inhibits the pursuit of his obsessions. Speculating on Sinclair’s state of mind when faced with the spectre of commercial impotence following the loss of Radionics, Tebbutt is certain that such circumstances would merely have strengthened Sinclair’s resolve. This view appears to be supported by a description of the period immediately following Sinclair’s departure from Radionics:

At this point Sinclair became profoundly calm. His irascibility vanished; he was, according to his mother, ‘charm itself’. Nigel Searle recalls him musing, ‘I really wonder whether I ought to be feeling as good as I do’, and those who knew him were puzzled enough by his serenity to recall it afterwards as noteworthy ... After the collapse, Sinclair felt free to rebuild his success with exhilarating speed and single-mindedness. (Fortune, March 1982.)

This ‘single-mindedness’ had little to do with the need for personal financial security or the bolstering of self-respect in the aftermath of what many would regard as an era of significant failure. Instead, Sinclair’s energies were devoted to generating the capital required to pursue the research uninterrupted by the shortsighted obstructions of the NEB.

In 1979, as in the years to follow, very little of Sinclair’s attention was focused on the problems and potential of developing and exploiting the home-computer market. The products that were to determine his business strategy and hold his interest in the post-Radionics years were flat-screen televisions, electric cars and, later, wafer-scale chips and portable phones. However, when circumstances dictate, even the purest of visionaries must resign himself to the strictures of pragmatism - or, in this case, the realities of consumer demand. The limited but encouraging success of the M K14 suggested an untapped source of revenue that could be profitably mined without exhausting the decidedly limited resources of Science of Cambridge.

In short, the ZX80, Sinclair’s response to the success of the MK14, was born of commercial necessity; that the machine spawned a range of home computers that revolutionized the consumer electronics industry must be regarded as the triumph of fortune over intent.

John Rowland, then with W. H. Smith, first met Sinclair in 1980 when exploring the viability of marketing the ZX80 through the high-street stores as part of the company’s move into consumer electronics. Rowland is convinced that initially computers were intended to play only a supporting role in Sinclair’s plans for the new company: ‘
The company was set up to develop the flat-screen TV; the computers came almost by accident. They were just produced to fund the TV project
’ (Interview, 18 October 1985). In an interview with the Sunday Times in April 1985, Sinclair himself acknowledges the irony of the genesis of the ZX range of computers, and confirms Rowland’s impressions: ‘
We only got involved in computers in order to fund the rest of the business.
’ An earlier interview with Martin Hayman reveals an ambivalence verging on indifference as far as computers are concerned:

I make computers because they are a good market, and they are interesting to design. I don’t feel bad about making them or selling them for money or anything, there is a demand for them and they do no harm; but I don’t think they are going to save the world. (Practical Computing, July 1982.)

Sinclair’s opinion of the most successful products his companies have produced and his motivation for entering the market in the first place is significant only in the light of subsequent events. After all, there’s no particular reason why any entrepreneur should be especially interested in the products he or she markets. However, Sinclair’s inability to isolate his personal predilections from corporate strategy is axiomatic to an understanding of his business failures, as will become clear later.

Rodney Dale, in The Sinclair Story, conscientiously reiterates the received truths celebrating the ZX80 as a revolutionary concept in microcomputer design. He even suggests that Sinclair and Chris Curry parted company over Sinclair’s determination to stick to his principles as an innovator. According to Dale, ‘
It was on the question of quality that Sinclair and Curry diverged.
’ As the ZX story develops, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine what Sinclair had in mind when addressing that ‘question of quality’. Certainly Curry left Science of Cambridge in 1978 to set up his own company, Acorn Computers, and in 1979 launched the Acorn System 75. In contrast to the pioneering design concepts behind the ZX80, Dale feels safe dismissing the Acorn machine as ‘
little more than an M K14 with a proper keyboard
’.

Whatever the System 75’s failings, in many respects Dale’s description is equally applicable to an assessment of the ZX80’s hardware. John Grant, the owner of Nine Tiles Information Handling Ltd, whose company was responsible for the machine’s software, suggests that the only sense in which ZX80 hardware was an improvement on that of existing kits was that it was encased in injection-moulded plastic. When fully assembled the majority of kits, like the Nascom and indeed the M K14, were used with their boards exposed. In short, it is incorrect to think of ZX80 hardware as in any way innovative. According to Grant, even the much acclaimed television monitor circuitry can hardly be attributed to the imagination of Sinclair R&D. This cheap and imaginative solution to an old problem is strikingly similar to an electronics project in an American book called The Video Cookbook. It’s worth stressing that although the ZX80’s video circuitry is clever and undoubtedly innovative, it offered an economic rather than efficient solution to the problem. As a consequence, many ZX80 users who progressed to bigger and better machines were amazed to discover that a flickering display was a characteristic of the machine and not a fact of computing life.

It is not our intention to in any way detract from Sinclair’s success in marketing the ZX range of computers. What is important is to be precise in our recognition of the components of that success. The ZX80 did not represent a development of existing technology, merely its competent application. Thus this particular product does nothing to support the popular image of Clive Sinclair the inventor. Indeed there is nothing in the development of the entire ZX range to suggest that he had even the slightest interest in performing such a role. When summing up Sinclair’s technical role in the creation of the ZX80, John Grant recalls:

Clive didn’t have a big involvement. He knew the kind of machine he wanted and the market he wanted to sell into. His interest was in checking around to find the cheapest components for the job. (Interview, 8 September 1985.)

Although the ZX80 reveals no evidence of technical innovation on the part of Sinclair or his R&D department, the machine’s success is a testament to the company’s remarkable marketing achievement. By tailoring the computer’s capabilities to what could be achieved using the cheapest components available, Sinclair was able significantly to undercut the competition. The low price tag offered a potential expansion of the market, but such an audience would have to be encouraged to sit up and take notice. So the unsightly innards of the ZX80 were hidden by white and blue plastic, and computing was promoted as a meal ticket to the future. The micro had begun its drift from the world of the hobbyist into the mainstream of consumer electronics. Seven years earlier, Radionics had helped perpetrate a similar shift in the market image of a commodity. With technology diminishing size and price, the promotions ensured that the calculator ceased to be a tool exclusive to the labs and came into use in business, ultimately descending into the hands of the student. Sinclair’s packaging and advertising eased each transition, soothing consumer anxieties while opening new markets.

While technically insignificant, the ZX80 is important as the machine that formed a bridge between the demands of the hobbyist and the toys-of-technology ethos of consumer electronics. Certainly the second half of this assessment is shared by Sir Clive himself, who in 1982 explained:

When we introduced the personal computer, there was no doubt we would sell some in the hobbies market, but we also went out with advertising promotion to the man in the street, on the grounds that there would be a completely new market there. (Director, July 1982.)

By ‘the man in the street’ Sinclair presumably means the ‘middle-class male professional’ with a taste for technological chic. After all, just under £100 for an image accessory was beyond the pockets of the inhabitants of humbler streets. This is partially confirmed by subsequent surveys, which revealed that the first purchasers of the ZX80 were professional males aged 25 to 40.

The kit was launched at a computer fair in the first week of February, and it was priced £79.95 (plus a further £8.95 for the power supply). The ‘ready-assembled’ model was launched a month later, priced £99.95. John Rowland, who at the time was W. H. Smith’s marketing development manager, recalls that the discrepancy between launch dates fed the rumours that the more expensive versions were simply customer-assembled kits returned to Sinclair for repair. Whatever the truth behind such stories, their popular currency says much about the company’s image even at this early stage in the game.

Before moving on to chronicle the development of the ZX80, a word should be said about the machine’s price. At the launch, both versions of the computer were significantly cheaper than anything else on the market. However, the company’s ability to smash, or rather circumvent, the £100 price barrier cannot be equated to its role in the fall of calculator prices a few years earlier. It was genuine advances in technology and design that facilitated the price cuts that established Radionics as a pioneer in the calculator market. It was Sinclair’s manipulation of product image that was behind the company’s early domination of the home-computer market.

In designing the ZX80 as a ‘crossover’ product between the hobbyist and consumer-electronics markets, Sinclair’s promotional master stroke was to mutate the market image of a microcomputer until it described the low-cost machine he could profitably produce. When discussing Sinclair’s initial brief to the hard- and software engineers who created the ZX line, it soon becomes clear that it was the price of components that established the limitations of application, not an informed assessment of the tasks to which a home computer might usefully be applied. This impression is confirmed by Steven Vickers when describing his work with John Grant on the development of the ZX81:

As far as Clive was concerned, it wasn’t a question of what the machine ought to be able to do, but more what could be crammed into the machine given the component budget he’d set his mind on. The only firm brief for the ‘81 was that the ‘80’s math package must be improved. (Interview with Steven Vickers, 23 July 1985.)

One of the most conspicuous economies incorporated into the design of the ZX80 was the ‘touch-sensitive’ or ‘membrane’ keypad. To avoid incurring the relatively high manufacturing costs associated with full-sized typewriter-style keyboards, the Sinclair machines made use of a top sheet of plastic, on which simulated keys were printed, the underside of which had a printed-on metallic circuit to contact a similar sheet underneath when pressed. The size and design of the membrane keypad made it an awkward and unreliable means of entering data; since there was no ‘feel’ to the keys, and no sound when they were pressed, a great deal of care was required checking whether a keypress had registered. Furthermore, with sustained use many keypads ceased functioning altogether.