Once upon a time, far, far away, a man discovered that he didn’t have enough fingers to count his bean crop. As a result, he created the abacus. The best guide to finding age calculator.
Okay, my ‘historical facts’ have been a little creative. For example, the abacus, the first widely recognized calculator mechanism, appeared in Greece.
The abacus, invented long before numbers, was used in various forms to keep track of the cost of goods. The earliest known example of this technological leap dates from around 300 B.C.
Given the rate at which humanity evolves and creates new tools to solve new problems, you’d be forgiven for thinking the abacus advanced the dark art of mathematical calculations at a breakneck pace. But, ine next breakthrough in calculator technology did not occur for another 1900 years.
In 1642, the next giant leap forward occurred. Blaise Pascal, a French inventor, created the Pascaline adding and subtracting machine. Pascal, ironically, made the device to assist his father with Haute-Normandie tax affairs!
Fast forward another 350 years, and the calculator has evolved by leaps and bounds. The calculator’s development was accelerated by rapidly advancing technological capabilities and reliable mass production.
In the 94 years between 1820 and 1914, the calculator went from being a curiosity available only to the wealthy to being widely used in commercial settings. It wasn’t until 1885 that the calculator began to include the push button keys that we’re all familiar with today.
The early 1900s saw fewer, but no less significant, improvements. In 1901, the standard two rows, five buttons layout was introduced. Ten years later, the United States incorporated the familiar Swedish 10-digit layout into the design.
The calculator’s development was hampered at this point by technological limitations.
The 1960s saw the calculator evolve from a cumbersome, lever-operated device to something genuinely portable.
The process of miniaturizing components such as transistors accelerated development. Between 1961 and 1964, calculator development accelerated from the 170 Vacua tube-based Anita Mk8 to the Sharp Compet CS 10A, the first transistor commercial calculator. Only four years later, Sharp released the Compet 22, the first commercial electronic calculator designed exclusively for the desktop market.
Sharp introduced the first battery-powered calculator, the QT-8D, in 1969. The QT-8D’s small size was one of its most impressive features: it measured only 5.2 inches by 9.6 inches by 2.75 inches. (WxHxD). A year later, Texas Instruments released an even smaller calculator, the Pocketronic.
Calculators became smaller while becoming more complex and capable as technology advanced. However, the high price was the one major deterrent to its adoption by the consumer market. The HP-55, introduced by H.P. in 1975, cost $385, which most ordinary families could not afford.
After a brief but bloody bout of technological warfare in the 1970s, only four manufacturers remained. Among these survivors were well-known names like Sharp and H.P.
The market was flooded with new devices in the 1990s. First, the basic model spawned a new line of calculators designed to meet the consumer’s ever-increasing needs. The list went on and on, from scientific to graphing, and then it went online.
Read Also: Stress – How To Reduce, Avoid, And Cope With Stress
