Chris Curry

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Sinclair Radionics

In April 1966 Curry joined Sinclair Radionics, a company founded by Clive Sinclair on 25 July 1961. Curry was to play an important role in getting Sinclair interested in both calculators and computers. Curry was to work for Sinclair for 13 years.

Related Topics:
Sinclair Radionics - Clive Sinclair

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Curry was at first involved with Sinclair's hi-fi products, which included amplifiers and speakers, and he also worked on Sinclair's electric vehicle, a project that would turn into the C5 some years later.

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In 1972 Sinclair Radionics launched its first electronic calculator, the Executive, which was considerably smaller than its competitors since it had been possible to use hearing-aid-sized batteries. Curry and Jim Westwood had discovered that it was possible to exploit persistence in the diode displays and memory and introduced a timer that removed the power from these components for most of the time. This made the battery life of the Sinclair product much longer than that of competiting products.

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Up to 1976 Sinclair Radionics had enjoyed 15 years of strong turnover and profit growth. However, the company sustained losses due to difficulties with chip supplies for the Black Watch. As a result there were insufficient internal funds available for the final stages of the pocket TV project Sinclair had been working on for some 10 years and external funds were sought. In August 1976 the National Enterprise Board (NEB) provided £650,000 in return for 43 per cent stake in Sinclair Radionics. Sinclair did not take very well to sharing control of his company. In 1973 Sinclair had bought an off-the-shelf company called Ablesdeal Ltd as a precaution in case anything should happen that made Sinclair Radionics inconvenient. This was now proving to be the case, and, during 75, Ablesdeal was renamed to Westminster Mail Order Ltd, which was itself renamed to Sinclair Instrument Ltd.

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