Sinclair Advert - June 1978

This is the second-earliest reference in this collection - and the first to mention an actual computer - to the company that would become Sinclair, which did so much to kick-start the UK home computer industry.

In its various corporate forms, Sinclair released revolutionary pocket calculators like the Sinclair Cambridge, the infamous LED "Black Watch", the world's smallest TV - the Microvision - the ZX range of computers and, er, the Sinclair C5.

This particular advert is for its MK14 microcomputer kit - a kind of early system-on-a-chip (or 15) which was originally put together largely from scavenged calculator parts - and it looks it - and which could be used to experiment with programming or be used as a hardware controller.

It came about largely thanks to Chris Curry, who had been working for Clive Sinclair at his existing Radionics company, based up the road in St. Ives.

Radionics was founded by Sinclair in 1961, thanks to his commercial success in buying, grading, testing and re-selling Plessey transistors^[1].

The company, which was known for its digitial multimeters and kit hi-fi like the Project 60, ended up being partially nationalised in 1976 by the National Enterprise Board^[2], a situation which Sinclair frequently complained as being "intolerable", even though it meant more funding to continue developement of Clive's Microvision portable TV project.

However, plagued by conflict with the NEB management - which frequently disagreed with Sinclair's visions - Sinclair started looking to the future and bought an "off the shelf" company called Ablesdeal Ltd as a potential "lifeboat".

He encouraged Chris Curry to leave Radionics in order to manage this new company - which was swiftly renamed to Westminster Mail Order Limited, and then Sinclair Instruments - with the new company's first product being a wrist calculator.

This was a product made to such un-generous tolerances that it was said there was only a "fair to middling chance" of getting all the components to actually fit in the case, let alone actually work.

There were however not many more ideas floating around at the new company, largely because Clive was the ideas generator and he was tied up fire-fighting at Radionics.

So perhaps luckily for the company, an engineer from Cambridge Consultants Ltd - a well-known and successful consultancy on Cambridge's Milton Road Science Park, of which Clive was a board member - was looking for a home for his prototype budget kit computer, before taking a new job with automotive basket-case British Leyland.

Curry was apparently impressed enough to provide the resources so that Williamson could build another prototype, but this time using as many of the old Radionics calculator components as possible^[3].

It was this prototype that led to the eventual MK14 - based on the cheap and simple-to-program National Semiconductor SC/MP - in a process that nicely explains how the finished product ended up looking like it did.

Early in 1979, the NEB lost its pro-Microvision head Lord Ryder, who left amidst claims that development of Sinclair's Microvision portable tv had already cost the NEB nearly £8 million.

In a move which was the final straw for Clive Sinclair, the NEB sold off the calculator and tv parts of Radionics, with the Microvision going to Hong Kong's Binatone, which found it couldn't make a profit on it either.^[4].

Sinclair finally left Radionics in July 1979 with a modest golden handshake and moved to Science of Cambridge full time.

Meanwhile, although the price and specification of the MK14 looks the same as in the advert that appeared later this year, the image of the board is quite different - this is an artists impression and looks even more like a calculator than the real thing.