Home > British Calculators

Advance Electronics

Advance Electronics of Bishops Stortford, England, made several models of hand-held calculators, starting with the Executive in summer 1972, and desk calculators. Some of the models were produced as self-assembly kits, and some were manufactured and labelled for Phytron Electronics and Fi-Cord.

The philosophy of the company was stated to be to give "reliability and value for money rather than such dubious advantages as extreme miniaturisation".

Click here for company details.

Known Advance models -

Desk Calculators -

• Wireless World Kit Calculator
• 161 (aka 16-1) - Has one memory.
• 16-R - Has one memory & square root.
• 162 (aka 16-2) - Has two memories.
• 162P - Programmable.
• Analysis 14 (reported to have 14 memories accessed by a grid of keys!). Also known as the Phytron Analysis 14.
• Executive 16

Hand-held Calculators -

• 82R - See Phytron 32.
• 88
• Executive 8
• Mini Executive
• Ruby 800

ADVANCE/WIRELESS WORLD
KIT CALCULATOR

Advance/Wireless World desk calculator kit.

8 Digits,  red LED

4 functions.

252 mm x 200 mm x 72 mm (10" x 8" x 3").

Integrated circuit is Texas Instruments TMS1802 date coded week 38 1971.

Assembled from a kit produced by Advance Electronics in conjunction with the electronics and radio magazine "Wireless World". Details appeared in the September & October 1972 issues.
The cost was £39.25 Sterling [about US$100].

The circuit board showing the calculator IC, just above the keys, and far left the white, hybrid thick-film integrated circuit with the clock generator circuit, which helps to reduce the number of components.

Advance designed this machine with reliability in mind. As reported in the journal Electronics in May 1972 "To Briggs [calculator production manager], the key is a machine that has a very low risk of going wrong and rarely needs servicing. "I know that some of our rivals dissipate most of their sales profits in servicing costs." he says. "Others save money by providing poor service for unreliable machines, and those companies won't last. We believe that we genuinely won't need to spend much money on servicing. Once we've got a reputation for reliability, [a lot of business] should come our way," he said.
Advance's approach to reliability has been to use high quality components, where necessary built to Briggs' own specifications, and in some cases with integrated functions, to push down the number of components used. The keys are sealed reed relays built initially by Alma Components Ltd. to an Advance spec. The clock circuitry contains a temperature-compensated multivibrator integrated with other functions as a thick-film hybrid, and the power input is solid-state regulated. The eight-digit-plus-sign readout is a single light-emitting-diode module, which for the larger machines is made complete with drivers by Fairchild and for the smallest machine is made with separate drivers by Texas Instruments.
Consequently Advance's part in making the machines boils down mostly to design, assembly, and quality control. The test process includes a 48-hour bake at 50°C and a period on a vibration rig. Briggs reckons that, neglecting overhead, 95% of production costs are for materials and only 5% labor."

The semiconductor company General Instrument Microelectronics had a factory in Britain, in Scotland, and offered some custom design and manufacture. Advance appears to have taken advantage of this since the GIM integrated circuits used in their calculators are stamped with the Advance "A" logo.

Several electronics magazines featured calculator designs in the early 1970s, and several companies supplied calculator kits, including Heathkit (see the Heathkit IC-2009) and Sinclair. These gave some cost saving and also the satisfaction of having assembled the calculator oneself.
The kit companies usually had a scheme whereby you could return the calculator for sorting out if it did not work properly !

In Britain there was an extra price advantage for the kits since they did not attract the Purchase Tax which was applied to complete calculators. This advantage was lost from April 1973 when the all pervasive Value Added Tax (VAT) was introduced, which applied to almost all products.

Within a few years all there was inside a calculator was the integrated circuit chip, the display, and the keyboard. The assembly cost was very little so kits had no advantage and died out.

ADVANCE 161

Advance 161 aka 16-1 desk calculator with one memory.

8 Digits, amber gas discharge behind red filter.
Will accept and calculate with 16 digits and display either the 8 most-significant digits or 8 least-significant digits as needed.

4 function, %, memory.

Main integrated circuits by General Instruments. They have the Advance Electronics "A" logo printed on them, so may be custom designs.

252 mm x 200 mm x 72 mm (10" x 8" x 3").

One IC date coded early 1973.

ADVANCE 162P

Advance 161

Prgrammable desk calculator.

8 Digits, amber gas discharge behind red filter.
Will accept and calculate with 16 digits and display either the 8 most-significant digits or 8 least-significant digits as needed.

4 function, %, memory, square root, programmable (2 x 40-step programs).

Main integrated circuits by General Instruments Microeletronics. They have the Advance Electronics "A" logo printed on them, so may be custom designs.

252 x 200 x 72 mm (10" x 8" x 3").

Chips are date coded 1974.

The price in 1974 was £199 Sterling (excluding VAT) [about US$460].

ADVANCE Mini Executive

ADVANCE 88

Advance 88.

Display is 8 digits, red LED.

4-function, %, memory, square root.

Main integrated circuits - Advance H52973 and General Instruments/Advance GIMT4 (here date coded late 1973).

ADVANCE Ruby 800

Advance Electronics

- Company details

The following history is derived from information provided by Pat Meads, a former employee who was a production supervisor and was involved in the assembly of their first calculators, and from the website of Advance Electronics Ltd. at http://www.aelgroup.co.uk/htm/index.htm:

The company was started by A.W. Stapleton in his garden shed. Advance Components Ltd. was formed on 24th March 1932, initially producing radio components, RF chokes, and small sub assemblies, and soon entered the field of electronic test equipment.

In 1956 it moved from Walthamstow to larger premises in Hainault, Essex, and the company went public. The name was changed to Advance Electronics in 1964, and about 1968 it moved to a new factory in Bishops Stortford, and a factory was also opened in Wrexham.
The five main business sectors were then:

In 1971 the group had about 1100 employees, with distribution through 33 countries, and sales figures of around £3.4 million (about US$8 million).

Since then the company was bought by Gould, had a management buyout from Gould, merged with other companies, and demerged again.
It is still in existance, based in Wrexham, and specialises in Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS), Power Conditioners, and related products.

The report "Electronic Calculator Markets and Suppliers", of 1974, says that Advance is "the third largest UK producer of electronic instruments. Electronic calculators account for nearly 20% of its sales, or £1M last year. It is technically perhaps more soundly based than Sinclair, but proportionally less interested in the mass market, with production of 20,000 units per annum."

Vintage Calculators

© Text & photographs copyright Nigel Tout  2000-2008 except where noted otherwise.