Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments, USA.
Texas Instruments started to investigate the design of a hand-held calculator in 1966 with the "Caltech" project. After a commercial tie up with Canon the result was one of the first
hand-held calculators, the Canon Pocketronic of 1971. Texas Instruments was awarded U.S. and Japanese patents for a "Miniature Electronic Calculator".
At first Texas Instruments was only interested in manufacturing the integrated circuits, but started test-marketing its first complete calculator, the TI 2500 'Datamath' in 1972. This was a great success and shortly after it was announced that TI "expects to announce a new calculator every 60 to 90 days for the next several months."[1] These were the first of a long line of Texas instrument calculators, which continues to this day.
Examples of Texas Instruments calculators
Canon Pocketronic
Texas Instruments was a pioneer in the integrated circuits for calculators and supplied a chip set for the Canon Pocketronic, one of the first hand-held calculators.
The three integrated circuits can be seen in the photograph below.
This is a featured calculator.
Texas Instruments TI 2500 "Datamath".
Introduced in mid-1972 this was the first commercial calculator produced by Texas Instruments, and cost $149.99.
This is a featured calculator.
Texas Instruments TI-30.
Introduced in 1977, this model was very popular and a great number were sold, making it very common.
This is a featured calculator.
Texas Instruments TI-58.
Programmable calculator introduced in 1977, features semiconductor library modules for different applications. By using specially developed modules several very specialised calculators were produced based on this model.
This is a featured calculator.
For further photographs of Texas Instruments hand-held calculators see the Calculator Photo Library on this site.
On this site see also the articles:
Joerg Woerner has a site with lots of information and photographs about Texas Instruments calculators at www.datamath.org
Reference:
Calculator Companies
Vintage Calculators
Text & photographs copyright, except where stated otherwise, © Nigel Tout 2000-2024.