Handheld Electronic Calculator Prototype - Texas Instruments Cal Tech
date: label: date made
content: 1967
name: label: maker
content: Texas Instruments
notes: label: Description
content: This prototype handheld electronic calculator was built in the Semiconductor Research and Development Laboratory at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas, by a team led by Jack Kilby (1923–2005), co-inventor of the integrated circuit. By the mid-1960s, TI was building microchips for industrial and military applications. The company president, Pat Haggerty, sought a consumer product that would use chips, just as earlier TI transistors had found wide use in transistor radios. Haggerty proposed a variety of possible products, and Kilby and his colleagues settled on making a small electronic calculator. TI had given an earlier development program the code name Project MIT. The calculator work, also confidential, was dubbed Project Cal Tech.
label: Description
content: Machines that performed basic arithmetic had sold from the mid-19th century, for use in business and government. Desktop electronic calculators with vacuum tubes sold from 1961, and with transistors from 1964. Kilby envisioned something much smaller that would be roughly the size of a book. This required a smaller keyboard, a new form of display, a portable power supply, and a new memory and central processor. Kilby assigned design of the keyboard to James Van Tassel, and gave work on the memory and processor to Jerry Merryman. He took responsibility for the output and power supply himself.
label: Description
content: By September 1967 Kilby, Merryman, and Van Tassel had made enough progress to apply for a patent. The submitted a revised patent in May 1971 and a further revision in December 1972. This final application received U.S. Patent No. 3,819,921 on June 25, 1974.
label: Description
content: The prototype resembles the “miniature electronic calculator” shown in the patent drawings. It has a metal case painted black and an array of seventeen keys and a zero bar. In addition to nine digit keys, there are keys for a decimal point, four arithmetic functions, clear (C), error (E), and print (P). The on/off switch is at the back right and a thermal printer with a thin strip of paper at the back left. The power supply plugs into the back of the calculator and into the wall.
label: Description
content: An inscription on the front of the calculator reads: THE FIRST CAL TECH (/) PRESENTED TO P. E. HAGGERTY (/) MARCH 29, 1967.
label: Description
content: Depressing a button on the front edge of the machine releases the cover and reveals an intricate “integrated circuit array” (to use the terminology of the patent description) and three chips. The array contained four integrated circuits, each the size of a wafer usually made with several chips on it.
label: Description
content: Further refinement of the Cal Tech led to the commercial Pocketronic calculator, introduced by Canon in Japan in 1970 and in the United States in 1971. Texas Instruments began selling calculators under its own name in 1972.
label: Description
content: References:
label: Description
content: Kathy B. Hamrick, “The History of the Hand-Held Electronic Calculator,” <I>American Mathematical Monthly</I>, 102, October 1996, pp. 633–639.
label: Description
content: Jack Kilby, <I>Oral History with Arthur L. Norberg</I>, June 21, 1984, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. A transcript is available online. Accessed June 18, 2015.
label: Description
content: T. R. Reid, <I>The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution</I>, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
label: Description
content: Jeffrey Zygmont, <I>Microchip: An Idea, Its Genesis, and the Revolution It Created</I>, Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2003.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Texas, Dallas
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
label: See more items in
content: Computers & Business Machines
label: See more items in
content: Handheld Electronic Calculators
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Texas Instruments
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CI.336000
label: catalog number
content: 336000
label: accession number
content: 319050
objectType: label: Object Name
content: electronic calculator
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: plastic (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 3/4 in x 4 1/4 in x 6 1/4 in; 4.445 cm x 10.795 cm x 15.875 cm