Sir Clive Sinclair, the father of the ZX Spectrum, died

Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor of the world’s first slimline pocket calculator and founder of the groundbreaking consumer electronics company Sinclair Research, has died. A report in The Guardian says Sinclair’s death occurred at home, following a long illness.

Sinclair invented the pocket calculator but was best known for popularising the home computer, bringing it to British high-street stores at relatively affordable prices.

Many modern-day titans of the games industry got their start on one of his ZX models. For a certain generation of gamer, the computer of choice was either the ZX Spectrum 48K or its rival, the Commodore 64.

Sir Clive left school when he was 17 before becoming a technical journalist for four years to make enough money to start Sinclair Radionics.

One of his first creations, in the 1970s, were a number of compact calculators that could fit into people’s pockets – at a time when most were the size of a shop till.

The inventor’s made his first home computer in 1980, called the ZX80, which transformed the market.

It cost just £79.95 and undercut its competitors in the rest of the market by about one-fifth, selling 50,000.

But he pushed down the price again with his next model, the ZX81, which was priced at just £69.95, selling 250,000.