Sir Clive Sinclair obituary

Inventor who brought pocket calculators and the earliest accessible computers into British homes

Sir Clive Sinclair, who has died aged 81 from cancer, was the inventor who brought pocket calculators and the earliest cheap and accessible miniature computers into British homes in the 1980s.

For a few years he seemed to be the epitome of the new hi-tech, go-ahead Britain the Tory government was striving to promote. He was made businessman of the year, knighted, championed by Margaret Thatcher and became, briefly, a multimillionaire. But, proving a better inventor and self-publicist than an entrepreneur, his reputation came a cropper in 1985 with the invention of the C5, his prototype electric car.

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