Brand: Sinclair Research Ltd.
Model: TV80 (FTV1)
Made in: United Kingdom
Manufacturer: Timex (Dundee, Scotland) / AB Electronics (Abercarn, Wales)
First year of production: 1984
Price: £79.95
Case design: Rick Dickinson
Box dimensions.: 200 × 140 × 90 mm
Successor to the Microvision named TV80 or FTV1 (Flat TV 1).
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The TV80 used a flat CRT with a side-mounted electron gun and electrostatic deflector plates which had been developed especially for this device. A Fresnel lens had to be used to convert the compressed image to the 4:3 format as the tube’s horizontal arrangement would have stretched the dots elliptically along the horizontal axis and towards the top and bottom of the vertical axis.
The whole tube was manufactured as two sheets of glass vacuum-formed in to a boat shape, with the top sheet of glass being covered with a transparent conducting repeller electrode and the phosphor being dry-electrostatically deposited on to vacuum-deposited electrodes on the bottom sheet.
The TV was powered by disposable flat Lithium batteries, developed in conjuction with Polaroid. They were sold at £10 for 3, lasting about 15 hours and couldn’t be recharged, making watching TV on the go an expensive affaire. When the TV80 was finally in the shops, Polaroid announced that it was ceasing production of the batteries.
Development took six years at a cost of some £4 million. All the electronics were combined in to one single Ferranti IC.
Dave Jones has a great explanation of the workings on his YouTube channel.