Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Vintage Calculator / Computer Historical Information

Nigel Tout has put together a  whopping amount of information for us on his "Vintage Calculator Web Museum"  web site. This site is fun to read and learn about calculators.  I learned about this calculator site searching for information for my collection of about 1000 calculators.

This site is useful for just about any collector or historian of vintage electronic or mechanical calculating  devices.  I liked the story about how the Intel 4004 microprocessor chip was developed as a first for Intel. I linked this story in my blog about Intel Intellec 4 microcomputer.
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Information from Nigel's website - "A revolution in calculating machines took place between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. It was during this vintage period that the electronics for calculators was at the cutting edge of electronics research. Calculators evolved from large, expensive, mechanical machines to cheap, electronic, credit card sized devices. The development of micro-electronics for calculators was an important phase in the history of technology, which included the development of the microprocessor.
This fascinating story is illustrated here with -
  • Mechanical calculators - both electrically driven and hand operated.
  • Early electronic calculators - using vacuum tubes (cold-cathode tubes/valves), discrete transistors, cathode ray tube displays, delay-line memories, small- & medium-scale integrated circuits.
  • Early hand-held calculators with LED, fluorescent, and early LCD displays.
The increasing capability of the electronic integrated circuits can be seen, which led to the microprocessor and the personal computer.
This site is dedicated to those who had to use slide-rules and mechanical calculators at school, university, and at work, back when the idea of a pocket electronic calculator was just a dream, and when they were eventually developed and went on sale having one was still a dream since at that time they were unaffordable for most people." (from vintagecalculator.com)



Here is another site about calculators  http://www.devidts.com/be-calc/





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Here I am with my wife Gaynell on a cool fall day last year. We  have a lot of fun doing things together. I would guess we have traveled to about 30 countries and operated ham radio and visited friends. We still travel but as we get older we like staying home near family. About one or two trips a year outside the US is about it for now. I  will be 75 this year and my wife does not tell  her age. This is  our LCF Group.
"by David Larsen" KK4WW Computer Collector / Historian

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