Calculator

Blaise Pascal invted the calculator.

Jan 1, 1642

Blaise Pascal started to develop a mechanical calculator - the Pascaline. Capable of addition, subtraction was performed by nines-complement addition, and multiplication was performed by repeated additions and subtractions. It had shortcomings and failed to sell.

Pinwheel Calculator

Feb 1, 1872

W.T. Odhner in Sweden independently develops the pin-wheel calculator. Since then, many calculating machines have used the same principle.

Comptometer

Jan 1, 1884

Dorr E. Felt invents the Comptometer, the first succesfull key-driven adding and calculating machine. In 1886 he joined with Robert Tarrant to form the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company which went on to make thousands.

Curta

Jan 1, 1948

miniature hand-held mechanical calculator introduced. One of the few major innovations in mechanical calculators in the mid 20th century.

Sharp QT-8D

Feb 1, 1969

First battery powered, hand-held, electronic calculator. First calculator using just LSI (Large Scale Integration) chips.

First Solar Powered Calculator

Jan 1, 1978

The first solar powered calculators were introduced, the Royal Solar 1. First solar-powered and first credit card sized calculators

Sharp PC1211 / Tandy TRS80 PC-1

Jan 1, 1980

The Sharp PC1211 / Tandy TRS80 PC-1 is the first hand-held computer; it has a QWERTY keypad and runs the BASIC language.

First Graphing Calculator

Jan 1, 1985

Casio made the first graphing calculator, the fx-7000G.