Mobility Matters Daily #160 - Saying goodbye to the micro-mobility pioneer

Something different today

Good day my good friend.

This is a bit of a different newsletter today, as yesterday came the sad news that Clive Sinclair has sadly passed. In some ways, he was the pioneer of the modern transport age.

Everyone knows the story of the Sinclair C5. An electric personal car that…lets say it had some design issues to put it mildly. With my personal favourite being not having enough power to deal with hills. Only 17,000 ended up being sold, and the vehicle company ultimately folding. But the infomercial is amazing to watch, and I highly recommend that you do.

But did you know he also made a folding bike? Specifically this bad boy…

My favourite reviews of this include “its a piece of cr*p” and it “has a fatally flawed design.” I have ridden one, and it is extremely light and extremely compact. But those wheels. Just 8 inches wide. Its almost impossible to ride and you feel every bump and you get so tired so quickly.

But the biggest impact that he had was helping to make personal computers mainstream. A lot of my own childhood was spent on variations of the following on my Sinclair ZX81:

10 print “hello”

20 goto 10

The Sinclair ZX80 entered the market in the UK in 1980 at a price of £100. Then the cheapest computer on the market, and whilst not quite affordable it was far from expensive. While the company failed ultimately, the impact of simply the act of making computers accessible to the public cannot be understated. Every single British computer scientist, programmer, tech geek, and anyone who works in the UK and has anything to do with computers - including transport people - have this man to thank for it.

Oh, and he also invented the pocket calculator. An essential tool of every traffic engineer I have ever known.

The world needs people like this guy. The tireless tinkerer and tester who, even if the idea fails spectacularly, by doing so they push the boundaries of what can be done forward. He failed at electric vehicles and folding bicycles, and even at the thing that made his fortune.

If you have not seen it already, I urge you to watch Micromen. A fitting docudrama that captures the essence of this man, whose impact on the way us transport planners do our work cannot be understated.

Here is to the passing of a legend.

James