Home > Hand-held Calculators
Featured Electronic Hand-held Calculators:
As can be seen by studying the Featured Desktop Electronic Calculators section, through the 1960s large numbers of electronics components were required in a calculator. So electronic calculators were then very large, consumed a lot of power, and only AC-powered desktop models were available.
As integrated circuits were developed it was possible to squeeze more and more functionality into fewer and fewer packages, which took up less room. So electronic calculators became smaller and also their power consumption was reduced. The fascinating story of the development of miniature electronics for calculators and the competing companies involved is told in the section "The Race to Make a Pocket Calculator" on this site.
By 1969 several companies had produced AC-powered calculators which used just a handful of integrated circuits which had a low power requirement, such as Sharp of Japan with the QT8-D desktop calculator. Then by replacing the AC power section with rechargeable batteries the first hand-held calculators were produced. Thus the Sharp produced the QT8-B, which was advertised in the U.S.A. in mid-1970, and around the same time Sanyo brought out the ICC-0081 and ICC-82D, and Canon brought out the Pocketronic. All of these models, which are featured here, can be used hand-held and remote from AC power, but are much too large to be called pocket calculators.
However, technology was developing very rapidly and there followed in late 1970/early 1971 much more pocketable models from Canon, Sanyo, another from Sharp, and the first truly pocket calculator, the Busicom LE-120A. The world was astounded when the first pocket electronic calculators became available in the shops and enabled everyone to carry a means to instant answers to their mathematical neads.
Initially the high cost of the leading edge electronics used in the early hand-held calculators meant that the price of these calculators was also very high. Many companies saw the possibility of making a profit and started to produce electronic hand-held calculators. So, over the next few years several thousand models were produced by two to three hundred companies. Some of these companies are obscure and produced only one or two models, whereas a handful of companies survived the plunge in calculator prices of the mid-1970s and continue to produce calculators today.
The alternative to the early, expensive, hand-held electronic calculators was the slide rule, including the Otis-King cylindrical type, and the miniature mechanical calculator such as the Curta. These devices continued to sell into the mid-1970s when the cost of hand-held electronic calculators fell so that they became afordable by all.
The early designs were very varied, and some now appear to be quite exotic. Frequently models were named "Electronic Slide Rules", illustrating that the device was seen as a replacement for the slide-rule.
Featured here are significant hand-held calculators and a selection of typical models.
There are also photographs of many other hand-held electronic calculators in the Hand-held Calculator Photo Library on this site.
For information about the electronics inside the calculators see the Calculator Technology section.
Click on a picture below for more details and more, bigger pictures.
The first prototype hand-held calculator
