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Rick Dickinson, Designer of Sinclair Spectrum Home Computers, Dies (bbc.co.uk)
New submitter Badger Nadgers quotes a report from the BBC: Rick Dickinson, the designer of Sinclair computers, has died in the U.S. while receiving treatment for cancer. The British designer, thought to be in his 60s, worked in-house for Sinclair Research and oversaw the creation of its home computers in the 1980s. He was responsible for the boxy look of the ZX80 and ZX81 and the Bauhaus-inspired appearance of the Spectrum. Mr Dickinson also helped to develop the technologies for the UK company's touch-sensitive and rubber keyboards. He was recently linked to a crowd-funded project by Retro Computers to turn the Spectrum into a handheld computer. Some of the early reference designs for the machine were drawn up by him.
I still have delightfully frustrating memories of building and coding for a ZX81, right after the kit came out - 129.99 for the pre-built & I was young &poor!
I wrote my first lines of code on a ZX Spectrum, as a teenager. I still remember the rubber keyboard keys. This made me feel old.
At least for me, it changed my life.
The ZX Spectrum was my first computer ever. I used it to learn BASIC, programming, and all things computers.
As a result, I switched careers from pharmacy to software, and never looked back ...
Rest in peace Rick!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
He designed the box.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The ZX81 still used the cpu to draw the display, it just did so during the vertical blank interval when nothing was being drawn on the screen. It slowed everything down by 75%, but it eliminated the flicker. The ZX computers seemed to be the only micros besides the Atari 2600 that required cpu to actively draw the screen. I'm sure ol' Clive saved a buck or two doing it that way.
He was in the US for complementary therapy as a desperate last resort after the cancer came back after his previous NHS treatment. Nothing to do with US medical care at all.
Several of the polytechnics were well known for first-rate vocational engineering training. I don't know about Newcastle, but Bristol Poly's aerospace engineering course pretty much guaranteed a job at BAe or Rolls Royce. It was a tragedy when the government decided everyone should go to university and turned them from first-rate vocational institutions into third-rate universities.
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