: I will try and check this out sometime, as I still know the industrial : designer who worked on the QL project for Sinclair. : : -- : Malcolm Cadman
About innovations at Sinclair Research, TT once told me this interesting story. They wanted to develop a pointing device at the beginning, before mice became standard. So they imagined a pen on a rubber surface. Under this rubber surface a electrically conductive layer for sensing coordinates with the pen into one direction, then a very thin insulating layer and again a electrically conductive layer to sense coordinates into the second direction. They had very big difficulties with the isolating material between the 2 conductive ones. It had to be very thin in order to allow easy navigation and yet to isolate, or there could be interferences. TT was in charge of this, and he found the solution in a sex shop: he ended up using very light tissues also used by men and women for other purposes. And he got an interesting reputation inside Sinclair Research! The pity of this story: Sinclair Research took a patent for this system which now seems to be widely used in portable PCs, but alas they never paid to keep the patent alive... Arnould
