Ben Cheese (1955 – 21 January 2001) was a British engineer who worked on

Sinclair Sinclair may refer to: Places * Lake Sinclair, near Milledgeville, Georgia * Sinclair, Iowa * Sinclair, West Virginia * Sinclair, Wyoming * Sinclair Mills, British Columbia * Sinclair Township, Minnesota * Sinclair, Manitoba People * ...

ZX Microdrive ZX Microdrive unit The ZX Microdrive is a magnetic-tape data storage system launched in July 1983 by Sinclair Research for its ZX Spectrum home computer. It was proposed as a faster-loading alternative to the cassette and cheaper than a flo ...

s. Authors Ian Adamson and Richard Kennedy, in their book ''Sinclair and the "Sunrise" Technology'', write that "it seems only fair to note that it was the tenacity and imagination of R&D staffer Ben Cheese that got the product .e., the Microdriveto the market". When Sinclair was sold, Cheese formed a company called

Flare Technology Flare Technology was a computer hardware company based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1986 by Martin Brennan, Ben Cheese, and John Mathieson, former engineers at Sinclair Research. Flare Technology first worked for Amstrad befo ...

with two other former Sinclair engineers, John Mathieson and Martin Brennan. Brennan and Mathieson went on to form Flare II, and to develop the

Atari Jaguar The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it competed with the 16-bit Sega Genesis, the Super NES and the ...

console. Meanwhile, Cheese worked with

Argonaut Software Argonaut Games PLC was a British video game developer founded in 1982, most notable for the development of the Super NES video game ''Star Fox'' and its supporting Super FX hardware, as well as for developing '' Croc: Legend of the Gobbos'' and ...

and

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

to develop the

Super FX The Super FX is a coprocessor on the Graphics Support Unit (GSU) added to select Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) video game cartridges, primarily to facilitate advanced 2D and 3D graphics. The Super FX chip was designed by Argonaut G ...

chip used in

Super Nintendo Entertainment System The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Eur ...

games such as ''

Star Fox is an arcade style rail shooter and third person action-adventure video game series created by Shigeru Miyamoto, produced and published by Nintendo. The games follow the Star Fox combat team of anthropomorphic animals, led by chief protagoni ...

''. Besides his engineering work, Ben Cheese also drew some mildly subversive cartoons for the Sinclair in-house newsletter called ''WHAM!'', or ''What's Happening At Milton''. Ben Cheese died from cancer at age 46.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cheese, Ben British electronics engineers 1955 births 2001 deaths Deaths from cancer in the United Kingdom Sinclair Research