Sinclair Research

Sinclair Research Ltd

Type	Limited company
Industry	Computing Electronics
Founded	Cambridge, England, UK (1973)
Headquarters	London, England, UK
Key people	Sir Clive Sinclair, Founder Nigel Searle, Director (1979 to 1986) Jim Westwood Rick Dickinson, Designer
Products	Sinclair ZX Spectrum Sinclair QL
Revenue	£102 million GBP (1985)
Number of employees	140 (1980s) 3 (1990) 1 (1997)

Sinclair Research Ltd is a British consumer electronics company founded by Clive Sinclair in Cambridge. It was originally incorporated in 1973 as Westminster Mail Order Ltd, renamed Sinclair Instrument Ltd, then Science of Cambridge Ltd, then Sinclair Computers Ltd, and finally Sinclair Research Ltd. in 1975. It remained dormant until 1976, when it was activated with the intention of continuing Sinclair's commercial work from his earlier company Sinclair Radionics, and adopted the name Sinclair Research in 1981.

In 1980, Clive Sinclair entered the home computer market with the ZX80 at £99.95, at that time the cheapest personal computer for sale in the UK. In 1982 the ZX Spectrum was released, becoming the United Kingdom's best selling computer, and competing aggressively against Commodore and Amstrad.

At the height of its success, and largely inspired by the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer program, the company established the "MetaLab" research centre at Milton Hall (near Cambridge), in order to pursue artificial intelligence, wafer-scale integration, formal verification and other advanced projects. A combination of the failures of the Sinclair QL computer and the TV80 led to financial difficulties in 1985, and a year later Sinclair sold the rights to its computer products and brand name to Amstrad. Sinclair Research Ltd still exists as a one-man company, continuing to market Clive Sinclair's inventions.

On 25 July 1961, Clive Sinclair founded his first company, Sinclair Radionics Ltd. in Cambridge. Sinclair Radionics developed hi-fi products, radios, calculators and scientific instruments. When it became clear that Radionics was failing, Sinclair took steps to ensure that he would be able to continue to pursue his commercial goals. In February 1975, he changed the name of Ablesdeal Ltd. (a shelf company he had bought in September 1973 for just such an eventuality) to Westminster Mail Order Ltd. The name was changed to Sinclair Instrument Ltd in August 1975.