Rick Dickinson - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Rick Dickinson is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

industrial design

Industrial design

Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...

er.

Early life

Dickinson graduated from Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University

Northumbria University

Northumbria University is an academic institution located in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. It is a member of the University Alliance.- History :...

) in 1979 with a First Class Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in Design for Industry. The 'Design for Industry' degree was the first of its kind, formerly a three-year 'Industrial Design' degree. The new course with two additional terms for industrial placements, extended the degree to four years and the introduction of the term "sandwich".

Sinclair

Dickinson joined Sir Clive Sinclair's Sinclair Research Ltd

Sinclair Research Ltd

Sinclair Research Ltd is a British consumer electronics company founded by Sir Clive Sinclair in Cambridge. Originally incorporated in 1973 as Ablesdeal Ltd., it remained dormant until 1976, and did not adopt the name Sinclair Research until 1981....

in December 1979, replacing John Pemberton who was leaving Sinclair to head up a new design centre for ITT in Harlow. Sinclair Research offices were at 6 Kings Parade, Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

.

Rick Dickinson was the in-house industrial design

Industrial design

er of Sinclair Research Ltd. He designed the ZX80 and ZX81 home computer

Home computer

Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...

s, including the touch-sensitive keyboard, as well as the rubber keyboard of the ZX Spectrum

ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...

. He also designed the TV80

TV80

The Sinclair TV80, also known as the Flat Screen Pocket TV or FTV1, was a pocket television launched by Sinclair Research in 1984. Unlike Sinclair's earlier attempts at a portable television, the TV80 used a flat CRT with a side-mounted electron gun instead of a conventional CRT; the picture was...

casing and Sinclair QL

Sinclair QL

The Sinclair QL , was a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as the successor to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum...

. Dickinson is a graduate

Alumnus

An alumnus , according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "a graduate of a school, college, or university." An alumnus can also be a former member, employee, contributor or inmate as well as a former student. In addition, an alumna is "a female graduate or former student of a school, college,...

of Newcastle Polytechnic, and worked for Sinclair as a student on one of his industrial placements from Newcastle Polytechnic before he had completed his degree

Academic degree

An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...

.

The ZX81 won a British Design Council

Design Council

The Design Council is a United Kingdom non-departmental public body incorporated by Royal Charter and registered as a charity.Registered charity number 272099.- In the beginning :The Design Council started in 1944 as the Council of Industrial Design...

award in 1981. It won a Haus Industrieform award and is in a permanent collection in Essen

Essen

- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...

. The Sinclair QL won an Italian design award at the Smau Industrial Design Award.

Post-Sinclair

In 1986, he founded Dickinson Associates, an industrial design consultancy based in Cambridge. That year he produced the industrial design for an early laptop computer, the Cambridge Z88

Cambridge Z88

The Cambridge Computer Z88 is an A4-size, lightweight, portable Z80-based computer with a built-in combined word processing/spreadsheet/database application called PipeDream, along with several other applications and utilities, such as a Z80-version of the BBC BASIC programming language.The Z88...

. In 1987 he was commissioned by Sir Alan Sugar to create the industrial design concept for Amstrad

Amstrad

Amstrad is a British electronics company, now wholly owned by BSkyB. As of 2006, Amstrad's main business is manufacturing Sky Digital interactive boxes....

's first portable computer.

In 1989 Rick Dickinson, Christopher Curry (Acorn Computers

Acorn Computers

Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK. These included the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro, and the Acorn Archimedes...

), and Keith Dunning had a re-think of the famous MacArthur field microscope and Rick designed the Lensman microscope, a portable field microscope. In 1991 the Lensman microscope won the BBC design awards, The Prince Of Wales Award For Industrial Innovation And Production, Archimedes award for Engineering Excellence.

He produced the industrial design concepts and models of the first 'Broad Band phone', for AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

. Dickinson Associates created the industrial design, mechanical design, and production engineering design for the first GSM mobile phone 'reference phone' design, for Rockwell

Rockwell International

Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate in the latter half of the 20th century, involved in aircraft, the space industry, both defense-oriented and commercial electronics, automotive and truck components, printing presses, valves and meters, and industrial automation....

. Dickinson Associates were also the designers of the Gizmondo

Gizmondo

The Gizmondo is a handheld gaming console which was released by Tiger Telematics in March 2005. The electronics design was undertaken by Plextek Limited and the industrial design by Rick Dickinson....

handheld console (originally the Gametrac).

External links

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