One Billion
In January 2007, Casio announced it sold one billion calculators in the past 42 years. If you add up all the calculators sold by other manufacturers like Sharp, Sanyo, Texas Instruments, and HP, the total number must be more than ten digits long.
Casio is doing well. On February 2, 2007, Reuters reported Casio’s announcement of a 13% rise in earnings helped Japan’s Nikkei share average hit a six-year high.
Look at the difference in Casio’s share price performance on the Nikkei over the past five years (below, left), and Seiko Epson’s (right). The latter recently purchased partner Sanyo’s loss-making liquid crystal display (LCD) division. No doubt there is nervous number crunching going on in Seiko’s Nishi-Shinjuku headquarters these days.
Image source: Reuters, Feb. 15, 2007
What could be more nerdy than a pocket calculator? Maybe a calculator watch. The instructor of a class I recently took in JavaScript claimed wearing a flash drive around your neck on a string is the current mark of a nerd. Guilty on all counts.
Photo: Copyright ©2007 Bryan Andersen
I’m not sure if Casio included my watch, model DBC-610, as one of the billion calculators sold. The first inspiration to buy it came in a reprographics shop while talking to an architect who wore one. He was dropping off drawings, and I was ordering staples for a vintage Bostitch stapler that takes a special size staple. The architect said he loved his Casio DBC-610 because it has a constant key. It was his second, he said, the first being a gift he’d worn out before purchasing another himself.
I finally bought mine on recommendation from an expert who goes by the name Casionerd. On Sjors’ G-Shock Forum, Casionerd advised DBC-610 is really a 1980s design, so it’s truer to the functionality calculator watches had decades ago. It has a tiny old fashion light bulb for a backlight, rather than an LED, which I like. These can still be purchased on eBay. I got mine for around $35, and replaced the flimsy metal band it came on with a new old stock rubber Casio one for an additional $10.
Wearing the watch takes getting used to. Tastes leaned towards thin and light watches in the ’80s. It rides low and hugs the wrist. As for functions, it tells time, has a page for telephone numbers, one for schedules, a calculator, world time, alarm, countdown timer, and stopwatch. The beep sound made when scrolling through function screens can be turned off to save on battery use.
Unlike my friend the architect, aside from play, I’ve never actually used the calculator function. I just like the nostalgia of it, and the nerdy look of the watch.
Although I couldn’t find a Casio calculator TV commercial, I did track down one for Sharp. It’s apparently from the year 1970. Check out the “world’s smallest electronic calculator” by clicking on the image below.
Source: Internet Archive Movie Archive
I have a modest collection of vintage calculators, many from the 1970s. I have several Sharps, a nice Sanyo, a Sinclair, and my favorite, a Texas Instruments TI-1250. I like it best because my brother had one back in the day.
One interesting thing about Casio pocket calculators from the ’70s is their names. Most manufacturers used abbreviations and numbers to name their products, for instance, Hewlett-Packard’s HP-65. Others, like Novus, gave theirs dignified names like The Mathematician.
Casio named calculators things like the Root 8, the Mini Root, and the Pocket Mini. Casio continues using cute, almost cartoonish names, today with products like the Frogman and Mudman in G-Shock line.
Photo: Copyright ©2007 Bryan Andersen
Maybe someday I’ll find a nice vintage Casio electronic calculator for 99¢ in a thrift store. I’d like a Pocket Mini. Chances are better than one in a billion there’s one out there with my name on it.
February 16th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Bryan—that was great! Here’s my contribution to the Casio calculator club (I swear I got it in the late ’70s when I was in high school). I still use it every day and have never replaced the battery, the solar cell is plenty good enough to run it after all these years.
As an aside, Programmable calculators have a special place in my heart, that’s how I got my start in computers and IT. Maybe I’ll do an article on that elsewhere and link back to it..
February 16th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Hi Larry,
That’s a good one, Super-FX!
Check this three-chip Sanyo CX-8001 found at the Salvation Army last week. These were made from 1973-74. The Sanyo CX-8001 is even thicker than an opened G3 iBook (closed, the iBook is slightly thicker). I picked it up for 99¢.
Photo: Copyright ©2007 Bryan Andersen
You mentioned using your Casio calculator in the late-’70s in school. As late as 1976, there was still a controversy about students using electronic calculators in class. UCLA had an interesting approach. It reminds us of how expensive these “computers” were in their heyday. Here’s a quote from a book on pocket calculators, published in the US Bicentennial year.
For more on the Sharp CX-8001, click here. Thanks for your compliment, comments, and photo. Enjoy your number cruncher!
Notes
1. Mullish, Henry.The Complete Pocket Calculator Handbook. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1976, pp. 248-249 (ISBN 0-02-587920-0)
February 18th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Bryan, I have the EXACT same Casio watch pictured in your article, the only difference is that mine is on a metal bracelet. I used this watch very extensively during the early years of my working life, right down to keying in all my meeting appointments. Perhaps it was the precursor to the omnipresent, and dreaded Blackberry!
February 18th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Bryan,
I graduated high school in 1980. As I was in the advanced math track at the time, we did first year college calculus taught by the local college professor who came to our class at the high school. One of the guys in the class had a TI58 or similar calculator. The teacher used him to check our work when we were doing matrices, it was faster than doing it by longhand!
I remember seeing the same student on a tv show of CalTech when they had some sort of sophmores vs. the seniors thing, this guy was on a team trying to break into a room that had been “secured” by the senior team. Ahh the memories!