ZX Spectrum designer has passed away

Rick Dickinson, the British designer of Sinclair home computers of the 1980s, has died of cancer in the United States. Among other things, the industrial designer was responsible for the appearance of the iconic ZX Spectrum.

Dickinson started at the end of 1979 at Sinclair Research, from inventor Sir Clive Sinclair. He designed the housings for the ZX80 and ZX81 home computers and was involved in the development of the touch-sensitive keyboard for these machines. According to him, this was chosen to save costs.

He had the most success with the design of the successor, which would actually be called ZX82 but was given the name Spectrum to indicate that it could display colors. After working for Sinclair, he started an industrial design consultancy, Dickinson Associates. This agency was involved in, among other things, designs for Amstrad computers, mobile phones and game consoles, the BBC describes.

Recently, Dickinson was involved with the company Retro Computers, which was trying to release a modern ZX Spectrum handheld, and with the ZX Spectrum Next, which was to be an extension of the original. Dickinson was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, after initially successful treatment, the disease returned last year.