Born
out of the patriotic fervour of The Queen's
Silver Jubilee in 1977, the Sovereign was an
attempt to break out of the bottom end of the
calculator market and recapture the top end. It
was one of the better-engineed Sinclair
calculators and was very well-designed - so much
so, in fact, that Sinclair designer John
Pemberton won a Design Council Award for it. It
was available in a satin chrome finish (pictured
above) or gold-plated. Sinclair even produced two
in solid gold!
It was, however, only something
of a "technical" success, as Sinclair
was by that time on the verge of being squeezed
out of an increasingly competitive market; profit
margins became so slim that Sinclair was soon
selling them at a loss.
|