This UTV news report from 1985 introduces the people of Belfast to the new Sinclair C5 travel device. Clive Sinclair had found fame and fortune through his range of early home computers – most memorably with the ZX Spectrum. He had then branched out into what he thought would be the first steps into a new form of travel. A cross between a motorised wheelchair and a bicycle, the C5’s slim lines certainly looked futuristic in 1985. It had a conservative top speed from its battery power and you needed to peddle going uphill. The extreme low level of the operator when using it probably also made it rather frightening if surrounded by lots of traffic.

At the gates of Belfast City Hall the general public express a whole range of opinions on the vehicle, both positive and negative and the reporter speaks to George Proctor, who was the first person in Northern Ireland to own one. The reporter then takes to the streets and we have great low angle shots from the back of a car of him reporting live as he drives around the City Hall. The C5 never caught on but by the 2020s motorised personal transport in the form of battery-powered scooters had become commonplace.