THE HISTORY OF THE CALCULATOR

Article Category: Units

Last updated: 24 March 2014
If you need an illustration of the accelerating speed of technological change, look no further than
the electronic calculator, that modest little device that does the most complex sum instantly and
that you hold in the palm of your hand.
Or more likely dont any more for the pocket calculator, which took more than four millennia to
evolve and only reached its current form in the 1990s, is already obsolescent, if not actually
obsolete.
The history of the calculator is split into two pages and has four main chapters:
1.
Beginnings: The Mechanical Age
2.
3.

Business Calculator: The Electronic Age

Pocket Calculator: The Microchip Age

4.

Calculators Now: The Virtual Age

BEGINNINGS: THE MECHANICAL AGE

The Abacus: Bean counters friend

In the very beginning, of course was the abacus, a sort of hand operated mechanical calculator
using beads on rods, first used by Sumerians and Egyptians around 2000 BC.
The principle was simple, a frame holding a series of rods, with ten sliding beads on each. When all
the beads had been slid across the first rod, it was time to move one across on the next, showing the
number of tens, and thence to the next rod, showing hundreds, and so on.
It made addition and subtraction faster and less error-prone and may have led to the term bean
counters for accountants.
But that was where the technology more or less stuck for the next 3,600 years, until the beginning of
the 17th century AD, when the first mechanical calculators began to appear in Europe. Most notably,
the development of logarithms by John Napier allowed Edward Gunter, William Oughtred and others
to develop the slide rule.

The Slide Rule: good enough for Dr. Strangelove

The slide rule is basically a sliding stick (or discs) that uses logarithmic scales to allow rapid
multiplication and division. Slide rules evolved to allow advanced trigonometry and logarithms,
exponentials and square roots.
Even up to the 1980s, knowing how to operate a slide rule was a basic part of mathematics
education for millions of schoolchildren, even though by that time, mechanical and electric
calculating machines were well established. The problem was that these werent portable while the
slide rule fitted into the breast pocket of your button-down shirt.
Real Rocket Scientists used slide rules to send Man to the Moon - a Pickett model N600-ES
wastaken on the Apollo 13 moon mission in 1970.

GEARS, WHEELS AND BUTTONS

The first mechanical calculator appeared in 1642, the creations of French intellectual and
mathematics whizz kid Blaise Pascal as a device that will eventually perform all four arithmetic
operations without relying on human intelligence.
Pascal's machine used geared wheels and could add and subtract two numbers directly and multiply
and divide by repetition. Gottfried Leibniz then spent the best part of his life designing a fouroperation mechanical calculator, based on his ingenious slotted Leibniz wheel, but ultimately failing
to produce a fully operational machine.

The Arithmometer: Soldiered on till 1915

That had to wait until 1820 and the patenting in France of Thomas de Colmars four
functionArithmometer.
This first commercially viable counting machine was manufactured from 1851 to 1915 and copied by
around 20 companies across Europe.
By then, the main tide of innovation had moved across the Atlantic, with the development of hand
cranked adding machines like the Grant Mechanical Calculating Machineof 1877 and, more
famously theP100 Burroughs Adding Machinedeveloped by William Seward Burroughs in 1886.
This was the first in a line of office calculating machines that made the Burroughs family fortune and
enabled the son, William S. Burroughs, to pursue a career consuming hallucinogenic drugs and
writing subversive novels like The Naked Lunch.

The Comptometer: Press key calculating at last

A further step forward occurred in 1887 when Dorr. E. Felts US-patented key driven Comptometer
took calculating into the push button age. This machine, too, spurred a host of imitators.

The Curta calculator, which first appeared in 1948, was perhaps the ultimate expression of the
mechanical calculator, so compact that it could, somewhat lumpily, fit into a pocket and capable of
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Machines like this ensured that mechanical calculators dominated 20th century office life all the way
through to the late 1960s. By then, electronics were beginning to take over, as we shall see in the
next part of this series.

Curta calculator: mechanical could be compact

BUSINESS CALCULATOR: THE ELECTRONIC AGE

The story of the electronic calculator really begins in the late 1930s as the world began to prepare
for renewed war. To calculate the trigonometry required to drop bombs into a pickle barrel from
30,000 feet, to hit a 30-knot Japanese warship with a torpedo or to bring down a diving Stuka with an
anti aircraft gun required constantly updated automated solutions.These were provided respectively
by the Sperry-Norden bombsight, the US Navys Torpedo Data Computer and the Kerrison Predictor
AA fire control system.
All were basically mechanical devices using geared wheels and rotating cylinders, but producing
electrical outputs that could be linked to weapon systems.
During the Second World War, the challenges of code-breaking produced the first all-electronic
computer, Colossus. But this was a specialised machine that basically performed exclusive or
(XOR) Boolean algorithms.

ENIAC: less processing power than a non-smart phone.

However, it did this using hundred of thermionic valves as electronic on/off switches, as well as an
electronic display.
The application of this technology to the worlds first general calculating computer had to wait until
1946 and the construction of the ENIAC(Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) as a
completely digital artillery firing table calculator also capable of solving "a large class of numerical
problems", including the four basic arithmetical functions.
ENIAC was 1,000 times faster than electro-mechanical computers and could hold a ten-digit decimal
number in memory. But to do this required 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays,
70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed around 27
tonnes, took up 1800 square feet of floorspace and consumed as much power as a small town. Not
exactly a desktop solution.

VALVE AND TUBE CALCULATORS

Electronic calculating for the office had to wait on the miniaturisation of valves and the development
of solid state transistors.

ANITA: First desktop all electronic calculator.

The first step was seen in 1961 with the arrival of ANITA (A New Inspiration To
Arithmetic/Accounting). This was the worlds first all-electronic desktop calculator and it was
developed in Britain by Control Systems Ltd., marketed under its Bell Punch and Sumlock brands.
ANITA used the same push button key layout as the companys mechanical comptometers, but
these were the only moving parts. All the rest was done electronically, using a mix of vacuum and
cold cathode Dekatron counting tubes.
The illuminated 12-place display was provided by Nixie glow discharge tubes. From 1962, two
models were marketed; ANITA Mk. 7 for continental Europe and the Mk. 8 for Britain and the rest of
the world, with the latter soon becoming the only model. These early ANITAs sold for around 355
($1,000), equivalent to around 4,800 ($8,000) in todays money.
Nevertheless, as the only electronic desktop calculator available, tens of thousands of ANITAs were
sold worldwide up to 1964, when three new transistorised competitors appeared; the American
Friden 130 series, the Italian IME 84, and the Sharp Compet CS10A from Japan.

TRANSISTOR AGE CALCULATORS

Friden calculator: First CRT display.

None of these were functionally superior to ANITA, nor cheaper (the Sharp CS10 cost around $2,500
in 1964) but their all-transistor designs opened the floodgates to a new wave of electronic
calculators.
These came from the likes of Canon, Mathatronics, Olivetti, SCM (Smith-Corona-Marchant), Sony,
Toshiba, and Wang.
Four of these Beatles-era transistorised calculators were especially significant, including
Toshibas "Toscal" BC-1411 calculator, which was remarkable in using an early form of Random
Access Memory (RAM) built from separate circuit boards.

Olivetti: Programma 101: Worlds first PC?

The Olivetti Programma 101 introduced in late 1965 was an elegant machine that won many
industrial design awards. It could read and write to magnetic cards and display results on its built-in
printer.
As a desktop electronic calculating machine that was programmable by non-specialists for individual
use, the Programma 101 could even claim to be the first personal computer.
From behind the Iron Curtain the same year emerged the ELKA 22 designed by Bulgarias Central
Institute for Calculation Technologies and built at the Elektronika factory in Sofia.
Built like a T-64 tank and weighing around 8 kg, this was the first calculator in the world to include a
square root function.

Texas Instruments Cal Tech: shape of things to come. Photo credit: Texas Instruments
All electronic calculators to this point had been bulky and heavy machines, costing more than many
family cars of the period.
However in 1967, Texas Instruments released their landmark "Cal Tech" prototype, a calculator that
could add, multiply, subtract, and divide, and print results to a paper tape while being compact
enough to be held in the hand.
A new chapter in the calculator story was opening...
Continue on to part 2 of our story of the history of the calculator, where we look at the microchip age
and the virtual age.

Next page: Microchip age and the virtual age

Written by Nick Valentine
Copyright The Calculator Site

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THE HISTORY OF THE CALCULATOR - PART 2

Article Category: Units
Last updated: 24 March 2014
The history of the calculator is split into two pages and has four main chapters, listed below. If you
want to read part 1 of the article, please go here.

1.

Beginnings: The Mechanical Age

2.
3.

Business Calculator: The Electronic Age

Pocket Calculator: The Microchip Age

4.

Calculators Now: The Virtual Age

POCKET CALCULATOR: THE MICROCHIP AGE

It had taken 3,700 years to move from the abacus to the first mechanical calculators and a further
250 years for mechanics to give way to electronics. Yet it would take barely a decade for
thecalculator to make its third metamorphosis, from a heavy, bulky, expensive desktop machine that
needed AC mains power to a cheap and compact battery or solar-powered device that would slip
into a pocket or wallet.
To make that transition, engineers had to solve three huge principal challenges: replacing boards of
transistors with integrated microchips, designing less power-hungry electronics and displays that
could run on batteries and developing slimmer, simpler control mechanisms.
Texas Instruments prototype Cal-Tech prototype of 1967 with its compact form was a prophet of the
future, but it still used transistors and needed mains power.

SEMICONDUCTOR REVOLUTION
However, within the next thee years, calculator development became the leading edge of Large
Scale Integration (LSI) semiconductor development, with strategic alliances formed between the
mostly Japanese calculator manufacturers and the largely U.S. semiconductor companies. Thus
Canon teamed with Texas Instruments, Hayakawa Electric (Sharp Corporation) with North-American
Rockwell, Busicom with Mostek and Intel, and General Instrument with Sanyo.

Sharp QT-8B: Microchip and battery powered. Photo: Vintage Calculators

By 1969, a calculator could be made using just a few low power consumption chips, allowing the
size and power consumption to be drastically reduced. The first of these appeared from

Japan: Sharps QT-8D Micro Compet. This used four Rockwell chips each equivalent to 900
transistors; one to power the green fluorescent display, the second to control decimal point, the third
to handle digital addition and register input control and the fourth to process arithmetic and provide
registers.
By modern standards this seems impossibly primitive, yet this Sharp calculator represented a great
leap forward, especially when they produced an alternative model, the QT-8B that replaced the AC
power supply circuitry with rechargeable cells, allowing it to be battery powered and completely
portable.
Within a year, the market in handheld calculators had started to take off with machines like
the Sharp EL-8, Canon Pocketronic and Sanyo ICC-0081 Mini Calculator all selling briskly,
despite costing the equivalent of more than $2,000 in todays money.

POCKET CALCULATOR

Busicom LE-120 Handy: first pocket calculator. Photo credit: Dentaku Museum
Yet even as they were introduced, these calculators were already obsolete. In that same year, 1970,
the Japanese company Busicom released their Junior desktop model that boasted the first
calculator on a chip - the Mostek MK6010 that combined all four functions plus decimal point and
display on one 4.6mm-square chip.
Within months, Busicom had used the same technology to produce theLE-120 Handy - a much
smaller machine, sporting an LED (Light Emitting Diode) display, and running on four AA batteries.
The pocket calculator had arrived.

1973 Sinclair Executive: calculator as desirable object

Busicom also followed an interesting blind alley at this time by developing a series of desktop
calculators powered by the first Intel chip set arrayed around the pioneering 4004 microprocessor.
It proved overkill for the calculator so Busicom freed Intel to sell the chip-set elsewhere. As the 8000
series, it went on to drive the first generation of PCs.
The Busicom LE-120 pocket calculator was followed in late 1971 by the American-made Bowmar
901B (The Bowmar Brain), still a fairly chunky 1.5 inches thick, and in mid-1972 from Britain by the
first slimline calculator, Clive Sinclairs elegant 99 ($200) Executive, less than a centimeter thick
and weighing only 70 grams.
The main problem with these pioneering machines were that they were too expensive for most
consumers (multiply prices by three to see current values).
They were also still limited to basic arithmetical functions and their LED displays drained the
batteries very quickly.

CHEAPER, BETTER CALCULATORS

Within a year, Sinclair had produced the Cambridge as the first low-cost calculator, priced at 29.95
(or 24.95 in kit form). The Sinclair calculators cost far less than the competition, but had an ugly
bulge in the back for the PP9v battery and with a design that frequently led to errors when doing
compound sums.

Hewlett HP-35: first scientific calculator

Meanwhile Hewlett Packard (HP) had been developing a scientific calculator. Launched in early
1972, the $395 HP-35 was an almost pocket-sized calculator with trigonometric and algebraic
functions.
Within a few months, Texas had hit back with their own SR-10 algebraic entry pocket
calculatorusing scientific notation for $150. The SR-11 featured an additional key for entering Pi,
followed in 1974 by the SR-50 which added log and trig functions to compete with the HP-35 and in
1977 the mass-marketed TI-30 line. Slide rule sales started to plummet.
By this time, calculators had also started to become programmable - accepting special inputted
instructions.
Again, Hewlett-Packard led the way with their HP-65 of 1974 that had a capacity of 100 instructions,
and could store and retrieve programs with a built-in magnetic card reader that also formed the label
to show the new assigned functions of the transferrable F-keys.

HP-65 Programmable: buying a calculator could be a Big Deal.

By 1979, HP were making an alphanumeric programmable calculator, the HP-41C, that could be
expanded with RAM memory and ROM software modules, as well as peripherals like bar code
readers, micro-cassette and floppy disk drives, paper-roll thermal printers, and miscellaneous
communication interfaces, like RS-232.
The Soviets also produced an interesting range of Elektronika programmable calculators in the late
1970s. People managed to produce hundreds of programs for these machines, from practical
scientific and business software to fun games for children. TheElektronika MK-52 calculator,
featuring internal EEPROM memory for storing programs, was even used in the Soyuz spacecraft as
a backup flight computer.
Subversive hacker cultures grew up, dedicated to mining the undocumented hidden capabilities
from the Elektronikas and the HP-41.

CALCULATOR WARS

Texas Instruments TI-2550: a calculator for just $9.95. Photo credit: Curtis Perry
Meanwhile, back in the mainstream, the struggle continued to make pocket calculators more
functional and affordable. The early calculators were very expensive luxury items because they used
specialised mechanical and electronic components produced in limited runs.

As the market developed, the components became commoditised and prices dropped. By 1974, the
bulky TI 2550 appeared as the first sub-10 dollar calculator and within a further two years, the price
of the basic 4-function pocket calculator was about a twentieth what it had been five years earlier.
Good news for consumers, bad news for manufacturers whose high margins had disappeared.
During the Calculator Wars of the mid-1970s, most of the specialist and me, too manufacturers
disappeared, leaving a market dominated by five major brands: Sharp, Texas, HP, Canon and the
new kid on the block, Casio.
The display was now the key technological challenge replacing LEDs with something less powerhungry. The Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) seemed to be the obvious answer but the early LCDs were
flaky and required a filament lamp for illumination, using almost as much power as LEDs. A clutch of
Rockwell-sourced models were manufactured during the early 1970s under such brands as
Dataking, Harden, Ibico, Lloyds and Rapid Data Rapidman, but none lasted more than a year or two.
Sharps "COS" (Calculator On Substrate) LCD technology was better but too expensive.
By the mid-1970s, calculators were starting to use twisted nematic black on grey crystal displays,
with yellow filters used at first to protect against UV.

Teal Photon: solar pioneer. Photo: Vintage Calculators

These could be driven directly by the IC chip. At the same time, improvements to the electronics
inside the calculators, using single chips and CMOS logic cells, again pioneered by Sharp in its EL801, meant that transistors only drew power when they changed state.
The end result, by 1978, was a new generation of pocket calculators with power consumption so low
that they could be driven by solar cells.
The first of these, the Sharp EL-8026, and Teal Photon, along with the credit card-sized Casio LC78 brought the calculator close to its ultimate form as the 1970s ended.

CALCULATORS NOW: THE VIRTUAL AGE

By 1980, pocket and desktop calculators had essentially reached the forms we recognise today;
compact in form, using single chips and LCD displays, operated via silicone membrane or dome

switch keyboards, powered by solar cells or button batteries and capable of a wide range of
functions.
Pocket calculators had also become very cheap, with some selling for as little as $1.99. Before long,
companies were starting to give pocket calculators away as freebies, much as USB memory sticks
are today.
By the eighties, the market was becoming saturated. Since it was hardly possible for calculators to
become less expensive, they could only find new buyers by acquiring new forms and functions.

POCKET COMPUTERS
The decade had barely begun when one possible route for calculator evolution appeared in the form
of the amazing Sharp PC-1210 and PC-1211 pocket computers and their Radio Shack equivalent,
the Tandy TRS-80.

Tandy TRS-80: calculator meets computer.

By the standards of the day, these were astonishing devices; combining a calculator with a full
QWERTY keyboard and 24-digit alphanumeric dot matrix LCD. They were programable in full BASIC
language and, via a cassette recorder input/output and docking into a mini printer, these devices
could perform almost the full range of computer functions.
However, there was no way of driving a full CRT monitor, which was a major reason, along with lack
of network connectivity, why the pocket computer proved to be a technological dead-end.
Already, it was possible for the prescient to discern a faint looming threat to the calculator: the
increasing prevalence, adaptability and functionality of personal computing.
However, that was still a full decade away and for the moment, the calculator was still the ultimate
form of computing for most. Besides, calculating still had one or two more major evolutions up its
sleeve.

GRAPHING CALCULATOR

Casio fx-7000G: the graphing calculator arrives.

One was the development of the graphing calculator, a pocket sized device that could plot graphs,
solve simultaneous equations, and perform numerous other tasks with algebraic variables. Graphing
calculators are also programmable, allowing the user to create customized scientific, engineering
and educational applications.
By the mid-1980s, Casio was vying with Sharp, Texas and HP for dominance of the calculator
market and it was they who developed the world's first graphing calculator, the Casio fx-7000G in
1985.
The fx-7000G was relatively primitive in having only an eight line dot matrix B/W display and less
than half a kilobyte of programming memory. However, it proved the concept with an enlarged
display and the capability to handle 82 scientific functions along with manual computation for basic
arithmetic along with a programming mode.
Like many of the more serious calculators, it used Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) where the
operators are entered after the operands. So where a basic calculator would use 4, x, 5, = [20] the
RPN would use 4, 5, x, key pushes. RPN has been proved to deliver faster calculations with fewer
errors.
Hewlett Packard soon followed suit with its own range of graphing calculators, starting with theHP28 series of 1986-88.

HP-28 graphing calculator: two-in-one design.

These were capable machines, sporting a flip-open "clamshell" case that paired an alphabetic
keypad with a typical scientific calculator layout, along with a 137x32 LCD dot matrix display, usually
displaying four lines of information and boasting four times as much memory as the Casio.
However, a design omission that had seemed insignificant in 1986 had by 1988 become a serious
flaw, the lack of a computer interface for uploading or downloading data. This was addressed on
the HP-48 series from 1990 onward.
The original HP-28C had a suffix denoting that it featured continuous memory. However by 1988 that
was no longer remarkable, since it had become common on all serious scientific and business
calculators. So in the late 1980s, HP calculators were classed S" for Scientific, "B" for Business,
and, from 1993, "G" for Graphic.

VERTICAL INTEGRATION

Calculated Industries ElectriCalc Pro: a calculator for electricians. Photo credit: Mark Bollman

Calculators were starting to go vertical - using flavored designs to appeal to specific market niches.
This trend was also seen in the emergence in the late 1980s of a new player, Calculated Industries.
CI produced designs tailored to specific trades and professions. Their first machine, the Loan
Arranger, was a simple to use loan amortization calculator marketed to the real estate industry.
CI has gone on to develop a wide range of other specialty calculators aimed at financial planners,
contractors, carpenters, plumbers, radio and television broadcast professionals, educators,
electricians, machinists, and even quilters.
Market segmentation was also seen when Texas Instruments produced its own line of graphing
calculators, starting with the TI-81 in 1990.
Not only were these calculators squarely aimed at the educational market but increasingly at
different segments of it.

Texas TI-81: optimized for students.

So while TI-80 and TI-73 were aimed at junior students 1014 years of age, other models such
as TI-85 and TI-86 were aimed at senior students, with features like calculus.
More modern graphing calculators produce color outputs and animated and interactive 2D and 3D
drawings of math plots, handling animated algebra theorems and preparation of documents
incorporating results.
Many can function as data loggers taking inputs from digital thermometers, pH gauges, weather
instruments, accelerometers and other sensors, with WiFi or other communication modules for
monitoring, polling and interaction with teacher.
This has given the calculator a guaranteed presence in high school classrooms and even in exam
rooms where they were formerly disallowed.
As the 80s gave way to the 1990s, new threats emerged to the calculator.

ENTER MOBILE DEVICES

BellSouth/Simon Personal Communicator: sign of things to come.

Along with the increasing prevalence of PCs and laptops, there was the advent of smarter mobile
phones.
The first hint of what was to come was delivered by theBellSouth/IBM Simon Personal
Communicator of 1993.
This was a cell phone (still very chunky by todays standards) with added Personal Digital Assistant
(PDA) functions including email, address book, calendar - and calculator.
In the same year, Apples Newton PDA first made its appearance, also with a calculator function.
It was soon followed by longer-lived Palm and Handspring PDAs. By now the calculator had been
relegated to the third device in your pocket, bag or case.

Nokia Communicators: 1990s-style smartphones.

The threat became still more explicit in 1996, with the launch ofNokias 9000 Communicator, a
remarkable bells and whistles device that bundled mobile phone with PDA functions and internet
connectivity to produce one of the worlds first true smartphones.
In 2000, the Ericsson R380 did the same thing in a more compact package, confirming the trend.
The mid-2000s unleashed the deluge: the Blackberry phone (2003), followed by the
touchscreen Apple iPhone (2007) and a host of Android and Windows Phone imitators. From

2010 and the launch of the Apple iPad, the idea of tablet computing first essayed in 1993 had come
to fruition.
All of these devices had calculator functions embedded, not as hardware add ons but virtually in
software, either as part of the original Operating System (OS) or as a downloadable plug in
application. And apps are unlimited - even graphing calculators or industry specific models can be
emulated in software.

CalcXT app for Apple iPad. Photo credit:appadvice.com

Yet the worlds stores and online portals still supply well over 250 different models of calculator,
ranging from a couple of dollars to more than $700, for a fully featured graphing calculator.

THE FUTURE
Four main factors are keeping the calculator alive. One is that designs have been successively
optimised to purpose, producing a level of function and capability that even tailored apps struggle to
emulate. The second is the high price of current smartphones and tablets while the third is that some
people just find it easier, quicker and more precise to operate a physical device than a touchscreen.

Desk Calculator: Back to the Future? Photo credit: Tsiakkas Office Solutions
Last, and arguably most important, dumb calculators have over the decades earned a place in
school and university exam rooms that remains closed off to smart tablets and phones for the
foreseeable future.
The desktop calculator, too, soldiers obstinately on, keeping its place in the office by dint of its
ergonomic advantages and print as you go function.
It would be ironic indeed if the humble desktop adding machine remains standing after the last
sophisticated pocket calculator has found its glass case in the Museum of Doomed Technologies.
What do you think the future holds for the calculator? Which calculators have you used during
your lifetime? Leave your comments below.
Written by Nick Valentine.
Copyright The Calculator Site