| Multimeters
Sinclair Radionics, 1974-79
Although they were far from being the most high-profile of
Sinclair's products, Sinclair's digital multimeters were the
steady-selling bulwark of the company's catalogue in the 1970s
and enabled Sinclair to produce his more exotic gadgets. Six
digital multimeters, plus one "pocket frequency meter"
and an oscilloscope, were produced between 1974-79. They were:
Sinclair himself was not particularly interested in his company's
digital instruments and played little part in their development;
as he commented to Computing magazine (17 February
1983), "instruments were profitable but dull." His
hands-off approach meant that the instruments division was
treated virtually as a company within a company. Derek Holley,
managing director of Sinclair Radionics at the time, recalled:
There was development going on in instruments,
but in a much lower key, and not in the public eye. [Instruments
staff] were almost also-rans within the company, people
that no one ever heard of, but they'd been reasonably successful
and launched two or three instruments which had sold considerable
numbers.
(Interview, 13 November 1985)
The men principally responsible for the Sinclair instrument
range were John Nicholls, the project leader, responsible
for the electronics and his assistant Keith Pauley, who engineered
the designs for production. In marked contrast to the rest
of the Sinclair range, the instruments gained a reputation
for reliable conventionality rather than often unreliable
idiosyncrasy. As Norman Hewett (another former managing director
of Radionics) has pointed out,
The instruments weren't funnies in the
sense of packing stuff in ... the multimeters were fairly
routine, with a metal case and plenty room, and anybody
in a compentent firm could put them together.
However, the multimeters eventually passed out of Sinclair's
hands. In July 1979, Sinclair was eased out of control of
Radionics with a £10,000 "golden handshake"
and the instruments business was hived off by the National
Enterprise Board to form a new company, briefly called Sinclair
Electronics (to which Clive himself had no direct connection)
but ultimately renamed Thandar. Thandar went on to become
a well-regarded manufacturer of digital instruments and is
still in business today under the name of Thurlby-Thandar
Instruments (see http://www.tttinst.co.uk)
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© Chris
Owen 1994-2003 |
