The Silver Jubilee Sinclair Sovereign calculator

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The Silver Jubilee Sinclair Sovereign
The Rolls Royce of pocket calculators

Here we have the Sinclair Sovereign, the royalty of pocket calculators. The two photos are of the same unit -- more on that below.

The Sinclair Sovereign Silver Jubilee calculator

The Sinclair Sovereign Silver Jubilee calculator with tarnish

Click a photo to enlarge

The first pocket calculator was introduced by Busicom in 1971, and in the following years the market exploded, with hundreds of new models appearing at ever lower price points. One company that entered this game was Sinclair Radionics, founded in 1961 by Sir Clive Sinclair (well, he was not a Sir back then). Sinclair produced a number of compact calculators that were well designed and well received, but plummeting prices led him to consider alternate product directions. His innovative idea was to produce a calculator aiming for high end customers -- a luxury product at a commensurate price. The Sinclair Sovereign, introduced in 1976, cost £30--£60 depending on the finish, at a time when ordinary calculators went for some £5.
Sinclair was known as a visionary innovator, and he had the Sovereign made as something truly special. The sleek, minimalist design, the clean lines, the sheer elegance were unlike anything that came before it (or long after; it would take Apple’s iPod to recapture this spirit). In fact it won a well-deserved Design Council Award. The red LED digits, though tiny by later standards, are a thing of beauty. And to top it all off, the case -- made of pressed steel, unlike the cheap plastic of the competition -- could be had in black, chrome-plated, silver-plated and gold-plated versions. There were even two solid gold exemplars produced, we are told -- neither is in my collection, I assure you!

I would’ve happily settled for the black or chromed version, which look great, but as fate had it, I had the opportunity to buy the limited edition Silver Jubilee variant. This came out in 1977 to honor (well, honour, I suppose) Queen Elizabeth II’s 25th anniversary on the throne. It is the silver-plated version (as befits a queen) but engraved with a suitable crown and inscription.
And the thing is, over the 13 years since I’ve purchased it the silver had tarnished from exposure to the air, as you see in the photo to the right above. I had to remove the case and take some Silvo polish to it to restore it to the state in the other photos. The queen, I suppose, would have this done by her First Yeoman of the Silver Pantry, which is a real title currently responsible for looking after over 8,000 silverware pieces.

The Sinclair Sovereign Silver Jubilee engraving

Click photo to enlarge

Sadly, the Sovereign came too late to make serious profits, and its power-hungry red LEDs were unable to compete with LCD displays. The company left the calculator market around the end of the decade and was re-formed to build microcomputers.
As for Clive Sinclair -- he was knighted in the Queen's 1983 Birthday Honours List. I doubt it was because she was so overtaken by the calculator he’d dedicated to her... but he certainly deserved this for his pioneering work and his impact on the UK microcomputer industry.

		Exhibit provenance: eBay. More info: The instructions manual is available here.

The Silver Jubilee Sinclair Sovereign

The Rolls Royce of pocket calculators