Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
The Sinclair C5: A £7 Million Toy Car
By James Grahame
The C5 was Clive Sinclair's bizarre followup to his brilliant ZX series of computers. This little trike has no RAM, no video display, and no keyboard -- it was envisioned as a tiny hybrid electric runabout that could replace the car for short jaunts at a mere 15 kmh. The product was an absolute disaster, and Sinclair was eventually forced to sell their computer assets to Amstrad after losing as much as £7 million on the C5.
Planet Sinclair has an excellent writeup on the £399 electric trike/car, along with some terrifying pictures of this tiny and slow vehicle in traffic. It's easy to see why the public didn't embrace these things in droves: even a bicycle would be safer in traffic than riding around on an overgrown child's toy.
"The C5 was promoted by Sinclair as a revolutionary advance in personal transport with the potential to replace the car. The original intention was that it would be only the first in a whole series of electric vehicles - it would have been followed the never-released C10 and C15, each successively bigger and looking more like conventional vehicles. At only £399, the C5 was a fraction of the price of a conventional car. In fact, it was not a car at all but was instead a glorified electric tricycle, powered by an electric battery with a supplementary pedal drive. It did not inspire confidence that the C5 was assembled and serviced by Hoover, better known for its washing machines, which led to unkind comparisons being made between the two product lines."
