Rick Dickinson, the designer of Sinclair computers, has died in the US 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 (Timex-Sinclair 1000 in the states) and the Bauhaus-inspired appearance of the Spectrum.
For many of use, even across the pond, his little machines were where we got starting in computing due to their low cost and easy to mod hardware. He wrote to me once via new thing call the Internet. That was done on an IBM mainframe use PROFS (for PRofessional OFfice System) mails, though.
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.
