Sinclair and the 'Sunrise' Technology: The Deconstruction of a Myth (3 page)

Apart from the significant comment in the last sentence, we can now pause to assess our subject’s initial entrepreneurial success.

These early products typify other aspects of the Sinclair approach. Compared with the small size of the goods, the scale of the adverts is noteworthy. From his first half-page ad Sinclair adopted a high profile in the magazines, graduating to regular double-page spreads by January 1964. Looking through them, one is also struck by the evident policy of varying contents and layout incessantly, in stark contrast to the general run of tedious and pragmatic advertising of the time. Superlatives, exhortations, patriotism, testimonials, drawings and photos are permutated month by month. The power of heavy advertising has remained the major marketing weapon for Sinclair ever since.

The advertising emphasis is tied in with the advantages of the mail-order mode of merchandising. Although advertising costs may be high, all sales are firm and prepaid, as long as you have the product to satisfy the demand, or can get it before the punters get too voluble about the strain on their patience. The temptation, of course, is always to assume you can get it to the market quickly, and launch early, taking advantage of the initial cash-flow boost. The heavily advertised initial launch for the mail-order market, premature or not, has another advantage to the entrepreneur seeking to maximize initial profits before broadening the marketing into retail outlets. Sinclair’s view on this has become a theory:

Mail order is a very useful way to get the story across. Not that big a proportion do buy on mail order, but they do see the ads, and that helps to prepare them for buying when the item appears in the shops. (Tycoons, p. 158.)

We can also identify here the start of what has been termed the ‘one-per-person product’ philosophy. The personal radio, using an earpiece, epitomizes an approach to product design and market identification that, from the Slimline radio via the calculators, the various pocket television models, on to the C5 and the projected personal cellular radio of 1986, has exerted a great influence on Sinclair. If the product is personal, you both maximize the market and have the additional handle of an absurd but effective pride in personal ownership that works to your marketing advantage, as long as the price is affordable to the individual enamoured of apparent progress or equipped with the gadget mentality.

Concern with those elements of product design unconnected with function is also apparent even in these early hobbyist kit days. There is a grasp of the elements of modernity in both naming and external appearance. Compared with the names allocated to other radios, such as ‘Minuette’, ‘Skygnome’, ‘Sky-Scout’, ‘Sky-Roma’, and ‘Ocean- hopper’, the ‘Sinclair Slimline’ and the ‘Micro-6’ are elegant titles redolent of the modernity of the era of the ‘tranny’, bobbysox and sideburns into which the world, with Sinclair’s help, was sweeping. As Alfred Marks commented, ‘Clive had a penchant for names.’ The name given to the nylon strap you could buy ‘for wearing the Micro-6 like a wristwatch’, which gloried in the appellation of the ‘Transrista’, although grotesquely memorable, was surely one of the less successful attempts of this period. Sinclair was however soon to discover the use of letters and numbers to create a suitably seductive air of science and the laboratory, titling his next major product the Sinclair X-10. This wonderful new pulse width modulated amplifier ran into the first advertising standards problem of Sinclair’s career. A contemporary journalist recalls that Wireless World refused to take Sinclair’s subsequent advertising for the X-10 because of complaints over the performance claimed for the amp. Its stated output was 10 watts R.M.S., but in reality it was capable of only a quarter of that.

Similar trends or trendinesses to those apparent in the concern with product names can be seen in his preoccupation with the external appearance of the products. The era of plastic had arrived, but the word is scrupulously avoided in all the ads. Instead, much is made of the Slimline case being ‘deep royal blue with gold lettering’ and ‘designed by a professional artist’ (probably Clive’s brother Iain). The Micro-6 has a ‘smart minute white, gold and black case’. A 1966 product, the Micro FM, hailed (by Sinclair) as ‘the world’s first pocket-size FM tuner-receiver’ has even more design features: ‘polished and brushed two-tone aluminium front panel’, ‘spun aluminium tuning control’. ‘In styling,’ we are informed, ‘this is the most elegant, most professional-looking design in miniaturized equipment ever made available to constructors, and is one you will be very proud to possess.’ The punters, even those hobbyists from whose ranks Sinclair had risen and who presumably shared his view that ‘small is beautiful’, had to be given some reason to fork out the not inconsiderable sum of £5.19.6d other than the innovative circuit. Apparently many would have been limited to admiration of the aesthetics and denied the benefit of audio pleasure, if Marks’s recollection is accurate that ‘it never worked. It did not have a proper aerial and just did not go.’ Needless to say this is not the impression given by the ads! Such quibbles should however quail before the relentless innovatory urge that the mere existence of a product should surely justify - especially since it probably did work if you lived next to the transmitter.

Before black became a characteristic colour, brushed aluminium reigned supreme in Sinclair’s style philosophy. When in 1966 the Stereo 25 appeared, this ‘all-purpose de-luxe pre-amp/control unit’, which was available only in its ready-built form, the public was informed that its appearance ‘reflects the professional elegance which characterises all Sinclair designs’. ‘Professional’ emerges as a favourite Sinclair buzz word, in several of its senses, in the course of his career, as we shall see in connection with later projects. As a final note indicative of Clive’s design philosophy, we should perhaps mention here that an early aversion to on/off switches is apparent; the pocket radios are all switched on by inserting the earpiece.

The theme of smallness and cheapness masquerading as design elegance has been mentioned already. The tendency of Sinclair designs to be pared to the bone on grounds of production cost and complexity can also be seen in these early days. One veteran electronics journalist recalls the early Sinclair circuit designs as ‘innovative but corner-cutting’, and the X-10 amplifier ‘used switched pairs of output transistors ... which relied rather too heavily on the concept of zero rise-time’ (Practical Computing, July 1982). Apart from this criticism of quality, there is also the fact that the power it could deliver was grossly over-rated in the adverts. Since it was being sold to people who knew about such things, its reputation was not high, once enough hobbyists had built this ‘100 per cent British Design’.

The X-20 amplifier soon added to the range was more realistic in its claims, since it could almost deliver the stated power at full stretch. Alfred Marks, who had no compunctions about stretching truth within limits, found himself cast in an invidious role in relation to technical claims:

He would make a breadboard and it would work. As his ad agency, it was not my business to measure the statistics given to me. However, if he said, ‘12-watt output’, it eventually got to the point where I said, ‘Is this peak or R.M.S.? And into what impedance?’ (Interview, 25 September 1985.)

As a result of this approach it is noticeable that the technical specifications in the ads did get more precise. The power of the advertising itself was perhaps more effective than some of the amplifiers. Despite the reservations some had over claimed performance versus actual results, retailers found that demand for Sinclair products was high enough to make it worth their while holding both kits and built items in stock, even though the discounts they could get were low.

The hi-fi boom of the 1960s was a good vehicle for Sinclair Radionics. In 1966 the company moved to Newmarket Road, Cambridge, and Clive moved with it. The Z-12 amplifier replaced the X-10, with the number being rather more meaningful this time, and was supplied ready built. This achieved ‘laboratory standards of performance’, whatever those may be, but advertising aside it is remembered as quite a good amplifier. Later this same year, with a power supply and the Stereo 25 control unit, Radionics had a hi-fi range aimed at a different sort of hobbyist. Now you didn’t have to do all the soldering of components on the circuits, but could still get that satisfying DIY feeling by linking the separate elements of your system together. Apart from the Micro-FM already disparaged above, Sinclair was overcoming design and production problems and producing items that, although firmly aimed at the budget end of the market, were enjoying some success in the hi-fi field.

The other major event of 1966, certainly in terms of Sinclair obsessions, was the demonstration, at the Radio and TV Exhibition of October, of the Sinclair Microvision pocket television receiver. Alfred Marks considers this 2-inch-screen television:

the one great glory of Sinclair’s life. He staged such a press reception, the likes of which you’ve never seen. The whole of Fleet Street was there. Unfortunately they asked rude questions which were technically devastating. For the advertisements we stuck a picture of the Acropolis on the screen so it looked as if it were working ... It would work if you were in luck [but] the chances of it working were slight, (ibid.)

Trumpeted in the adverts as providing a ‘worldwide sensation’, the ‘world’s first pocket TV’ with ‘exclusively designed tube and loudspeaker’ is hailed as an ‘amazing Sinclair triumph’. The reader is promised that it will be available ‘early 1967’ at a cost of 49 guineas. The announcement was a bit premature, since the world had to wait for another nine years to pass, and a lot of taxpayers’ money, before the obsession of Sinclair with the pocket television matured into product. We shall come across many other instances of overoptimism in Sinclair promises for the future in our peregrinations towards the promised lands of consumer electronics, but nine years is the current record.

Early in 1967 the Microvision disappeared from the ads, and the eager electronics enthusiasts were offered instead the Micromatic.

Apart from not offering a wrist strap, packing the kit bits in a ‘see-for-yourself sealed polystyrene pack’ and giving the ‘beautifully styled case’ a ‘polished aluminium front panel’, this is in fact our old friend the Micro-6. Despite the fact that ‘never in the history of radio has any kit been so elegantly presented’ this facelift fell a little flat on the market.

The hi-fi units were doing well, however, and the company turnover reached £100,000 in this year. A loudspeaker, the Q14, was produced. In 1968 the Neoteric 60 amplifier - the name is an obscurantist synonym for ‘new, recent, modern’ - was launched. Alfred Marks again:

It was a slim, well planned amp. It was an integrated amplifier, produced with a great array of controls using little flat tabs instead of knobs. They were good amplifiers, [but] the Neoteric’s steel lid hummed like mad because it was too close to the transformer. The lid ‘sang’, and that was another product that died a natural death, (ibid.)

This ready-built unit, available from the retail trade, and the System 2000 amplifier, FM tuner and loudspeaker system introduced later in the year marked an attempt by Sinclair to break into the ‘proper’ hi-fi market, bypassing the hobbyists who had provided the base of his operations to date. Although competitively priced and modernistically styled (black and brushed aluminium), the products didn’t make a great impact. This was partly due to the above-mentioned problems on the Neoteric, leading it to vanish quickly from sight, and the fact that the FM tuner for the System 2000 was a poor design, even in its mono version, while with the stereo decoder added it was almost impossible to tune into a station.

The hobbyist market was promised the same year the IC-10, a monolithic integrated-circuit amplifier, all the circuitry on a single chip, but it had to wait a good while. Production problems again, but at least this time they were connected with genuinely innovative technology. Although the problems were with the producers (Plessey) Radionics had to deal with the waiting punters. Letters were sent out apologizing for the delay, and it was only towards the end of the year that supplies became available. This did not end the problems, since the IC-10 didn’t live up to its promise, as Alfred Marks remembers:

It was Clive who first made an integrated circuit available to the public - the IC-10. Then an integrated circuit was a miracle, but the IC-10 wouldn’t peak at 3 watts really, and flopped. It was probable, although only rumour, that the IC-10 was a product which Plessey were not too happy to have in their stable, anyway, (ibid.)

Radionics had, with a combination of mediocre design and production problems, failed to make significant inroads into the off-the-peg hi-fi market. Retrenching slightly, it initiated the Project 60 range of modules with the Z-30 amplifier. The name again might be thought to give a false impression; it actually delivered between 15 and 20 watts R.M.S. according to Sinclair’s specifications. Linked with the Stereo Sixty pre-amp and control unit, and the following year’s active filter unit, FM tuner and a new amplifier, the Z-50, the DIY hi-fi freak had a variety of options at a reasonable price, and the module range survived longer than any other Sinclair hi-fi products.

In February of 1971 Radionics moved to Enderby’s Mill in St Ives. With ‘thousands of square feet at 4 shillings per’ (CCL Company History, Rodney Dale), it was classed as a derelict warehouse, and hence cost only a seventh of the market rate. Though discovered by Tim Eiloart of Cambridge Consultants, that company had no capacity to make use of such a vast space - 7000 square feet plus. Sinclair took on the main mill, and its six floors, and let Cambridge Audio (part of the AIM group, which had grown out of the Cambridge Consultants Ltd activities) use the smaller ancillary premises. He installed himself in a cavernous office on the top floor, and doubtless considered himself to have arrived. Alfred Marks reminisces: