Sinclair Research


Sinclair Research

(company)A British microelectronics developer andmanufacturer. Evolving from Sinclair Radionics in 1979,Sinclair Research was owned by Sir Clive Sinclair. SinclairRadionics produced electronic components and devices (such ascalculators and pocket radios and televisions), but SinclairResearch began by producing some of the first 8-bit homemicrocomputers.

Sinclair produced five microcomputers from 1980 to 1987, allbased on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor (except for theQL, which used the Motorola 68008 - a variant on the68000). The 1K kit-build ZX80, introduced in 1980, wasfollowed by the 1K ZX81 (expandable to 16K) in 1981, the 16K(expandable to 48K) ZX Spectrum in 1982 (then superseded bytwo distinct 48K models and a 128K model in 1986) and the QL(Quantum Leap) in 1984. A portable laptop computer, theZ88, was released in 1987 under the Cambridge Computersbanner.

Of them all, the ZX Spectrum was the best known, and it wenton to become the most popular microcomputer of its time in theUnited Kingdom and in many other territories. This was partlydue to its ease of use, and also due to its enormoussoftware catalogue, covering games, word processing,music, programming and graphics. Glorious"mine's-better-than-yours" battles were fought (and still aretoday) between owners of Spectrums and Commodore 64s overwho had the best machine.

Sir Clive's financial problems in the mid-80s led him to sellthe rights to the Sinclair brand to Amstrad in April 1986.This led to further models of the Spectrum being released from1986 to 1988 and also an IBM PC-compatible basedinternally on Amstrad's own PC range. Sir Clive was notinvolved with the production of these computers, and nocomputer with the Sinclair name has been produced since.

http://sinclair-research.co.uk/.Planet Sinclair.comp.sys.sinclair FAQ.