Empire of the Sum by Keith Houston

Author:Keith Houston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2023-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

The Busicom Handy-LE, also known as the LE-120A. This is the world’s first pocket calculator. The switch labeled “4,” “2,” and “0” controls the number of decimal places used in calculations. Calculators that provided a “floating” decimal point were rare. Häll, Peter. “Miniräknare.” Stockholm: Tekniska Museet, 1971. https://digitaltmuseum.se/021026362246/miniraknare. CC BY image courtesy of Peter Häll / Tekniska Museet.

Busicom spun the Handy-LE into a hierarchy of related models. The LE-120G was plated with 18-karat gold while the LE-120S was built on a lighter plastic chassis. The LE-100A was a more affordable ten-digit model, and 1972’s LE-80A shrank the Handy-LE into the same volume as a packet of cigarettes.29 It was a prescient echo of today’s welter of identikit smartphones.

With the Junior and the Handy-LE, Busicom had proved that it could streamline its more basic models. But Mostek’s calculator-on-a-chip was a one-trick pony, capable only of basic calculations in order to keep its price as low as possible. The second prong of Busicom’s strategy was quite different. For its high-end, business-oriented machines it would build a “chipset,” or collection of integrated chips, that could be reprogrammed to work as any device Busicom might want to sell: a calculator, a cash register, or an automated teller machine.30

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