At 81 years of age, Sir Clive Sinclair has passed on.
Creator of the ZX series of affordable home computers (and of course the legendary C5 electric vehicle), it can be said that he did a whole lot for developers and gaming in the past and present. I know quite a few devs whose first computer was a ZX Spectrum and it was my first taste of programming (at a friends - using one of those printed code sets in magazines).

Edit:
Wikipaedia entry for those unfamiliar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Sinclair
YouTube video on one of his products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqivyqPW5pM

RIP Clive. I have many fond memories of my childhood ZX Spectrum +2. Still got a lot of those games (Dizzy, Gauntlet, Skool Daze, etc) installed via emulator (for both PC and Android tablet today). There's a great Youtube channel RZX Archive with a ton of various playthroughs on it.

Just saw this.

RIP father of the speccy.

;_;

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair...

I cut my teeth on a ZX Spectrum 16k back in 1984 at a friends house (when we were supposed to be at school...) playing many of the games that are timeless today. Copying out countless program listings from Spectrum User and many other magazines... Tirelessly debugging them line by line since they never ever worked first time. This is a fair chunk of my childhood right there, and I have Sir Clive to thank for that. :)

You will be dearly missed...

RIP Mr Sinclair. I had a Speccy during my school years. Half of today's devs couldn't write "Hello World" in the same 64KB space I played my first 3D game, Castle Master. It was a great little micro-computer.

Fell off the back of a lorry? ;)

And yeah, truly made computing accessible to so many back then. Have to wonder if the ZX (and other budget comps) hadn't launched back then, what the world may be like now.

Spent many, many hours exploring the wonders of ZX Spectrum games.
Wherever you are now, Mr Sinclair, know that you made lots of kids happy during the 80s.

https://youtu.be/f3KE0EuzD4U

Without any fear to be mistaken, this guy designed, for the first time, an affordable, domestic, and easy to manage microcomputer that popularized the computing and programming in the minds of an european generation. Something similar to what the Apple II did in America

Maybe it was not perfect. It was inferior to other counterparts. But it did its job, it was relatively cheaper compared with the competition and now is well remembered, more remembered than others.

It was really more the C64, which was far cheaper, was more accessible by being sold in department stores rather than only in computer stores, and remains the best-selling single computer model ever. ZX Spectrum is #3 (and Timex Sinclair 1000 is #10, good job getting on the list twice!). Apple II is #4. (Modern computer models aren't usually sold for much more than a year and therefore have no chance to get on the list.)

If anyone wants a history lesson/technical look back, might I suggest this?

And here's the one on the Timex 2068.

The man was an absolute pioneer of many technological milestones and a his brutal method of lowering the entry to market was key in making computers commonplace.

Vale trailblazer. The world is a little less bright, now.

RIP. His computer changed the face of computing with his specturms. They may have been less powerfull than some of the 8 bit rivals but due to the low price it got so many people into computing as well as gaming and pionered the golden age of computers.

Sad to see such a visionery man leave this realm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM

There was a semi documentry called Micro Men about Sir Clive and Chris Curry (Amstrad). YOutube link above. Well worth watching to see whe world these men created and what they had to go through.

RIP
A pioneer in the world of gaming

Saw this on the beeb. I wouldn’t be where I am or doing what I am doing without spectrums and zx’s. Happy days! The epitome of the crazy inventor.