1 Week Till ‘King of Bling' Gold Calculator on Show

• Tuesday, 28 February 2006

From 6th March - Calculator Exhibition @ Museum of Computing, Swindon

Photos available including stunning shot of gold-plated Sinclair calculator

28th February 2006, Museum of Computing, Swindon - Swindon’s Museum of Computing proudly presents a limited edition, gold-plated ‘Sinclair Sovereign’ calculator as the centrepiece of its next exhibition featuring a wealth of calculators, counting devices and arithmetic aids. Its creator, Sir Clive Sinclair, will be the guest of honour at the launch party at 6.15pm on Monday 6th March. Places are very limited but you can email info@museumofcomputing.org.uk for an official invitation.

The range of over one hundred and twenty exhibits spans timeless counting tools such as abacii, slide rules of every shape and type, comptometers and other mechanical calculators including the CURTA hand-cranked calculator used in rally car racing. Electronic models are represented from the earliest valve machines through transistorized desktop models up to the first integrated circuit devices. There are even wristwatch calculators from Sinclair and Pulsar. The gold-plated Sinclair calculator won a Design Council award when it was launched in 1977 and Sir Clive Sinclair’s legacy is very much in evidence with eighteen of his calculators on show.

The exhibition is a fascinating glimpse into not only the technology, the variety of devices created and the ingenuity creating them, but also how we used them. Stories from comptometer operators who trained for up to 15 weeks at the manufacturer schools are part of the displays as is some of the fascinating advertising literature.

For all those wanting an overview of modern calculator history, purely mechanical devices such as the comptometer were superceded by electrically powered models. Attempts were made by pioneering manufacturers such as Casio to produce machines based on electromechanical relays, but it was the advent of the valve and electronics that took the calculator forward. Power hungry valves were replaced by transistors in the 1960’s and these were subsequently replaced by integrated circuits ten years later. They were packed ever more tightly onto integrated circuits and Intel reduced the entire functionality of a calculator onto a single microchip for the Japanese manufacturer Busicom. Pulsar introduced one of the first wristwatch calculators in 1975.

Today, the technology is much the same but with added features such as graphical displays and the inevitable miniaturization process. At the launch party, Casio will be exhibiting state of the art calculators complete with PC connectivity.

The exhibition at the University of Bath in Swindon is sponsored by Business Link and will be officially opened by Daphne Milner, Chief Executive of Business Link Berkshire & Wiltshire. Dr. Tilly Blyth, who is curator of Computing and Information at London’s Science Museum will give a half hour talk on the development of calculators. The event opens with a short address from Sir Clive Sinclair. The Museum of Computing welcomes approaches from schools and colleges for group visits.

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DIRECTIONS
The Museum of Computing is housed in the business library of the University of Bath in Swindon, Oakfield campus. For directions go to www.bath.ac.uk/swindon/getting-here/ Open during library hours. However, for the hands-on experience of the gaming machines, Curator Simon Webb is on hand most Saturday mornings from 9am to 1pm.

Museum of Computing Profile
The museum is devoted solely to the history of the development of computers. It is adjacent to the Library of the University of Bath in Swindon, and this initiative is being supported by the Science Museum in Wroughton, the British Computer Society and Swindon Borough Council. The Museum has a growing collection of exhibits and accepts donations of suitable machines. Its function will be to act as a showcase for outside exhibitors. The first exhibition was presented by Bletchley Park Trust. The Museum is keen to show former products of commercial computer companies, and welcomes such offers. www.museum-of-computing.org.uk
For further details, jpegs, screen grabs or interviews contact
Rhona Jack MIPR
Blue Click PR Ltd.
Tel: +44 (0)1666 511780
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For details on specific computer exhibits, contact
Simon Webb
Mobile +44 (0)7939 582544
info@museum-of-computing.org.uk

FOUR SAMPLES FROM THE ARCHIVES

Felt & Tarrent Comptometer - 1920
Introduced in 1893, the comptometer was the first successful key operated mechanical calculator and became an immediate success. Because several keys could be pressed at once, the comptometer was ideally suited to tasks such as quickly adding lists of numbers. It’s speed of use meant that even with the advent of the electronic calculator in the early 1970’s comptometers were still in regular use. Comptometer operators were generally women and training to use this machine was carried out in one of the many Felt and Tarrent comptometer schools across the country.
Otis King Tubular Slide Rule

Those of us who can remember the slide rule before electronic miniaturisation brought us the pocket calculator, will remember a ruler like device with a central slide. The accuracy of a slide rule is dependant on its length, the longer the slide rule the more accurate it is. The Otis King was radical design that wrapped a slide rules scales onto a spiral forming a pocket sized tubular calculator. If ‘unwrapped’ you would have scales that were 66 inches long!

Curta – used in Rally Car Racing

The Curta calculator, first introduced in 1948, was a small hand-cranked mechanical calculator with an extremely compact design; it could fit in the palm of the hand. Its uses included addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, as well as harder operations such as square roots.

Invented by Curt Herzstark of Austria while he was a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp, the Curta was considered to be the best portable calculator available until electronic calculators were introduced in the 1970s. Herzstark managed to survive the camp, encouraged by his camp leaders who wished to give the invention to Hitler as a gift. After WW2, Curta Calculators went on to be made in a factory in Liechtenstein.
The Curta Calculators were also popular in sports car rallies from the 60s to the 80s. They were used in TSD rallies to help calculate distances and times to checkpoints etc. Contestants who used Curtas were called “Curta-Crankers”.

Around 140,000 Curta Calculators were created, with the last one being made in November 1970.

Sinclair Sovereign (black, silver plated and gold plated)
The Sinclair Sovereign has been described as the most beautiful calculator ever made. Designed by John Pemberton and launched in 1977, its elegant and simple design won a Design Council award and launched Sinclair’s entry into the top end of the calculator market. As well as the black version, limited edition silver and gold plated versions were also produced and will be displayed at the exhibition.

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