Well, within a couple years at school we were very fortunate to get a Wang 370 which you could program with the same kind of blank computer cards as the IBM 360 at the university.īut only one card at a time almost like it was a toaster. I really wanted to work with the Friden extensively but we could not keep it, though I was really looking forward to seeing what they came up with next even more. People were still not very comfortable driving a foreign car across the US because there were virtually no available tires, parts, qualified mechanics, or metric tools in many states at all, and seldom until you got to a big city, most often close to a port of arrival at a factory dealer.Ī new Ford Falcon could be had for only a few hundred dollars more. 1 2 3 This machine had a 13-digit capacity and a 5-inch CRT display. Plus it was about the same price as a new Volkswagen beetle which was about the cheapest car and about the only import you would usually see. Friden introduced the first fully transistorized desktop electronic calculator, the model EC-130 in June 1963, designed by Robert 'Bob' Appleby Ragen. Within a year, the price was down to 1,695. In August of 1964, the Friden 130 electronic calculator went on the market, selling for 2,150. In 1963 Friden was acquired by Singer Company. Or a printing adding machine when you need the output document. The Friden Calculating Machine Company began manufacturing mechanical calculating machines in California in the 1930s. Nobody had seen anything like it, and I did want to keep it because the registers looked so promising, but otherwise it really didn't do that much.įor most things it could be outperformed by an unpowered slide rule or Magic Brain Calculator. I test drove one of these as a youngster when my father brought a demo home from the salesman.
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