Electronic Calculators
Anita electronic calculator
Making a small inexpensive calculator out of vacuum tubes was no easy task. It took four years to design.
Electronic Calculators
The Electronic Age elbowed out the Mechanical Age in the 1960s. Calculator manufacturers had to adapt or perish.
Electronics firms not previously in the calculator business saw this transition as a chance to compete on a newly level field. Competition fueled innovation. By the late 1960s, desktop electronic calculators were lighter and quieter than their mechanical ancestors. Not necessarily better for every job…but bursting with potential.
Canon Pocketronic printing calculator
This was the first product directly based on Texas Instrument’s 1967 prototype.
View Artifact DetailLittle Professor Arithmetic Game
This “calculator in reverse” posed arithmetic problems for young children to solve. It sold in the millions.
View Artifact DetailA Leap Forward…Briefly
ANITA was a curiosity: a groundbreaking milestone, but quickly outdated.
Announced in 1961, ANITA (A New Inspiration To Arithmetic/Accounting) was the first commercial, all-electronic desktop calculator. Computer pioneer Norbert Kitz created it for the British firm Bell Punch. Yet, true to his roots in an earlier era, Kitz designed ANITA with vacuum tubes, even though most calculating circuits were already using the more efficient and increasingly inexpensive transistors.
ANITA sold well at first, filling a commercial niche. But from the start, its tube technology was obsolete… and its days numbered.
Sumlock Comptometer calculators
The first commercial electronic calculator was developed by a British firm related to Dorr E. Felt, who patented the Comptometer in 1887.
View Artifact DetailANITA electronic calculator advertisement
The advertisements for ANITA electronic calculators were tailored to particular markets.
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