Son of someone who worked at Sinclair
Just joined the ZX81 forums:
http://www.rwapservices.co.uk/ZX80_ZX81/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=522&sid=2f9e54a3c422c038c186605f5d0189e2
I don't have the names for all the electronic designers, but I have this list:
Briant Flint
John Nichols
Chris Curry
Jim Westwood
Keith Pauley
Any thoughts on who he might be? :) He says his dad left Sinclair in 1981.
http://www.rwapservices.co.uk/ZX80_ZX81/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=522&sid=2f9e54a3c422c038c186605f5d0189e2
I don't have the names for all the electronic designers, but I have this list:
Briant Flint
John Nichols
Chris Curry
Jim Westwood
Keith Pauley
Any thoughts on who he might be? :) He says his dad left Sinclair in 1981.
Post edited by zxbruno on
Comments
Based only on MicroMen (BBC), I would guess maybe Chris Curry. Seems the right sort of time that he joined Acorn.
Could well be then zxbruno, I was only guessing, and I couldn't open the attachment (problems with 21st Century Computer!). Looks like an interesting interview, I'm going to read it properly tomorrow.
If you check in Linkedin, there's a Tom Flint who had a summer job at Dwight Cavendish Ltd, during the time the Brian flint Worked there.
That is the best interview I have read in ages. Thanks.
The Robin mentioned in chapter 3 could be Robin Bradbeer who did a lot of work for Sinclair and others even in the calculator days. I noticed Robin has retired from HK University so details have been deleted. Robin has some albums on Picasa including two CES shows from which this pic of Clive is taken at the 1980 show.
https://picasaweb.google.com/rsbradbeer
I was amused by the cramped conditions while Martin had an office to himself. Martin is, of course, Martin John Brennan whose initials are carved in various Spectrum ROMs. That is very much how Dr. Ian Logan described a visit to Martin's office which was generally off-limits.
I was reading Sky magazine last month and noticed a photo of Martin in a full page advert.
Rick Dickinson had this take on conditions in the other office
We only get these opportunities once in a while and I don't consider myself qualified to do this. Is there something or someobe in particular we've been looking for or trying to understand for a long time?
Since this can be of great importance to the Spectrum community, I ask that those who do know what to do, to step in and talk to Tom.
I only have Amstrad questions I'm afraid :)
Hi Geoff, this is Tom Flint. Bruno suggested I join this forum. Actually, I think that is a different Martin you are talking about. The chap my dad worked with was, I think, already managing the design team back in 1971 and had possibly been there a while. Have a re-read of the interview. He would be about 70 now and left the company in the 1970s to start his own business. If dad ever remembers his Sir name I'll let you know.
You have to remember that the company basically went bust in late 1970 so hardly anyone made it from St Ives to Cambridge. By the mid 80s, they had grown again with new people.
Hope you weren't offended by us trying to discover who had written that initial forum post!
I wasn't offended. I'm surprised no one asked me directly though.
My dad's experience will differ to that of others. They were making calculators, hi-fi gear, computers, televisions and, possibly their most successful business, instrumentation (hence TTI). There were different pressures on each team, depending on what was working and what was not. I think dad talks about a set of chips which didn't work as an example.
Sinclair tended to have the ideas, drive the projects on, but it was down to the engineers and product designers to get it working. Sinclair oversaw the whole thing on some level, but wasn't necessarily intimately involved in the ins and outs of development. There was a lot of pressure, particularly as the company was partly funded by the NEB, who demanded profitable results.
It's not easy being innovative and inventive. Much easier to do what Alan Sugar did, which was use the most affordable existing technology and package it for profit.
I'm at work right now, but later in the day I will probably have a few questions of my own. :)
thanks for correcting me on the Martin identity and it's good to have you here. I'd also like to know what you and your father thought of Micromen. It seemed a bit Acorn oriented but is it true that those Acorn techies were always popping in to King's Parade? I know that the Acorn HQ was just around the corner.
I caught this article in the Cambridge News about Clive throwing prototypes out the window into the canal. Is it truthful? Has your dad any other anecdotes?
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Business/Business-News/One-of-Cambridges-best-kept-secrets.htm
Did he read The Sinclair Story by Rodney Dale, (who edited the MK14 manual and was a regular at St. Ives)?
It's really time I reread it. I can't keep it all in my head.
Regards to you both,
Geoff.
Micro Men was based on this BBC Horizon film from 1989:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh1LNsptktU
Although Micro Men was a comedy drama, the real thing is even more amusing in some ways. Please take a look, it is excellent. Horizon used to be such a good programme.
My dad seemed to think it was fairly accurate.
Geoff: my dad did read the Rodney Dale book many years ago. I think it was detailed in some ways but his research was inconsistent. He only interviewed some of the people involved and many of those who were there in the 80s had only second-hand knowledge of what had gone on in the previous decades. Not only did he not contact my dad, for example, he didn't even mention his name.
Sinclair did have a temper which made for a stressful working environment at times, but I'm not sure if he was throwing things out of the window at the Mill. He probably threw something across a room, but I suspect that the story is apocryphal and I doubt that chap would have seen it during his visit.
+1
It's a great documentary, thanks for the link.
Yes that is some omission. Elswhere I saw that this year your dad has clocked up 50 years unbroken pioneering employment in the electronics industry. Throughout that time he has carried quite a few spongers.
The kind of guy that the UK, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Italy needs today.
Issue 2 of The Polymath Perspective is out and carries this 3 part interview which mentions your dad.
http://www.polymathperspective.com/?p=809
Rick Dickinson: The Enigma of Design.
I assume the interviewer, TF, is you Tom. Excellent.
Please continue. You have talent and there are many more subjects I am sure.
Yes, dad retired in January. Where did you read about his 50 years? Amazing research. After Sinclair, working for Dwight Cavendish in St Neots, he taught himself software programming and began including PIC devices in his hardware designs. It's a very economical way of programming and controlling. Where he was working most recently, they separated hardware from software, and did things by brute force, throwing in lots of memory and then letting the software guys to get on with it. A lot can be done that way but it's not always the most cost-effective way of working, and margins are important.
The Martin at Sinclair was Martin Willcox. He was chief engineer in the early days. He joined a company that Wesley Ruggles (Sinclair production director) set up. Dad thinks Martin went to the States after that.
It was in his Linkedin profile
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/brian-flint/a/873/362
A record to be proud of.
There seemed to be a few cartoonists at Sinclair. Rick Dickinson's photostream has sketches of Stuart Honeyball who went on to Miracle Systems and Dave Chatten who wrote Mensa books.
Sir Clive was chairman of Mensa. Were many other people at Sinclair members of Mensa?
Geoff, that's very kind of you to say that about him.
There seemed to be a few cartoonists at Sinclair. Rick Dickinson's photostream has sketches of Stuart Honeyball who went on to Miracle Systems and Dave Chatten who wrote Mensa books.
I don't know who were Mensa members. My dad wasn't, I don't think. All I know about Dave Chatten is that his son, Ryan, a huge curly-haired lad who liked motorbikes, was in my year at school (Hinchingbrooke). His dad had done well from the company in the early 80s and Ryan was known amongst his school pals to have a bob or two. Dave might have been smart enough to sell his shares before the company crashed, I'm not sure.
It's possible that Martin Willcox was a Mensa chap. Dad told me he was extremely bright, and Adrian Espin called him a wizz.
It's interesting that it was based on a 'Horizon' film. I was under the impression that it was an attempt at a British version of the TNT Movie 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' that charted the rise and opposition of Apple and Microsoft in the 70s and 80s. (Which is also quite a good movie if a bit over-dramatized.)
I agree about Horizon, Q.E.D., etc. I loved all of those 80s documentaries. (In fact there are a couple of editions of 'Electric Avenue' Here, that follow the guys who invented 'Spec-Drum' and show the dawn of EPOS and electronic credit scoring and profiling (which has gotten out of control, IMHO.)) You don't really see their like any more.