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Setting a New Standard

Monroe LA5-160 Calculator

This four-function machine combines large capacity and small size. Monroe calculators were made at their headquarters in New Jersey, and also in Holland.

Setting a New Standard

Jay Monroe’s goals were not modest: a simple-to-use, portable, powerful four-function calculator with a keyboard and proof of input accuracy.

In 1912, he and Frank Baldwin formed Monroe Calculating Machine Company to realize those goals. Baldwin’s electro-mechanical calculators, some with as many as 12,000 parts, revolutionized scientific and technical calculations and stimulated competition.

Chief Lens Designer Gordon H. Cook, Cooke Optics

Academy Award winning lens designer Gordon Cook uses both a cylindrical slide rule and a desk calculator. Each had its own advantages and disadvantages.

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Friden SRQ-10 calculator

Friden’s calculators were the first to directly compute square roots.

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Marchant "ACRM" Calculator

A typical “full-sized” technical calculator. The Marchant company was founded in Oakland, California in 1911. Their chief designer, Carl Friden, left to start his own company in 1934.

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A “human computer” at Langley Aeronautical Laboratory

The technician reads data from photographic film and then performs initial calculations. The Friden calculator was among the most powerful available in 1952.

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Monroe Calculator

Frank Baldwin invented the moving carriage that dominated technical calculator design for decades. An architect by profession, he held patents in several unrelated fields.

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