Sinclair Technologies
This blog is in appreciation of Sinclair products and technologies, which in the past was one of the first exposures to home computing before it became commonplace.
There’s a good review by Daniel Griffiths here:
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is 40 years old today (beyondgames.biz)
I had two early products by Sinclair, one was ‘the Smallest Radio in the World’, the other was the Sinclair Scientific Calculator which used reverse Polish logic for keyboard inputs and programming.
The Sinclair Scientific calculator was introduced in 1974, and the Sinclair Scientific Programmable calculator, released a year later, was advertised as the first budget programmable calculator. Because of the way the processor was designed, limited memory and a limited number of hardware keys, it uses Reverse Polish Notation to input calculations. Instead of an “Equals” button, the + or – keys are used to enter the initial value of a calculation, followed by subsequent operand(s) each followed by their appropriate operator(s). For example, to work out 3 x 2, you would type 3 + 2 x giving the result 6.0000 00 (the display always shows the number in scientific format as a 5 digit mantissa and a two digit exponent).
Note also some constants were printed on the case, avoiding storing in memory, and the on/off switch, needed for the LED (not LCD) display which by todays standards was power hungry.
The smallest radio in the world, was the Sinclair Micromatic. Here is a good description:
Sinclair Micromatic Pocket Radio (petervis.com)
This came as a kit to build yourself. A fairly basic two transistor am radio.
