Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
The best of Sir Clive
By James Grahame
Sir Clive Sinclair is a bit of a nutter. He made millions from rubber-keyed ZX Spectrum computers in the 1980s, but his vehicle designs make me think he secretly fancies himself as Agent 007. That way, he could add rocket launchers to his futuristic eas scooters and peculiar folding bicycles.
Now that's out of the way, allow me to introduce my favorite Sinclair creation. The Cambridge Z88 is a sleek notebook computer that was introduced in 1987 and promptly forgotten. It runs on four AA batteries and features 32KB of memory (upgradable). The display is a 640 x 64 monochrome LCD capable of three (count 'em!) shades of grey. A decent productivity suite was included: word processor, spreadsheet, calculator, BASIC interpreter, and various PDA-like widgets. To round off the package, software is available to transfer files to and from a PC.
Rakewell Limited still offers the Z88 and numerous accessories online. Prices start at £80.00, so this might be a perfect solution for someone needing a cheap writing machine with a full-size keyboard. Or, if you're like me, you can use it to write incomprehensible spaghetti code in BASIC.
Cambridge Z88 (Rakewell Limited)
