Calculator History

The Calculator Wars started in the late 50s, and would rage on until the first personal computers became available to the public, and even then the battles went on. Companies competed to make Calculators smaller, cheaper and faster than what their competition was making. Like early Calculators the top end was trying to be smarter, do more things and do it faster with bigger numbers, whilst trying to bring down costs and increase convenience. This is also the era where the now-universal pocket calculators started to appear. Calculators were valuable assets in the 60s through to the early 80s. Huge and bulky desk calculators were regular features of office life in those times, saving huge amounts of time and money for companies and individuals despite the hefty price tags they demanded. Able to do some very large and complex sums and solve problems accurately and near instantly where any person without a maths degree wouldn’t know where to start. Pocket Calculators only quickened the pace of development further, while the early models didn’t immediately replace the unwieldy desk calculators, they were small and portable enough to take anywhere and could do basic sums just as quickly as the heavy weights. But the Desk Calculator’s days were numbered, as portable Scientific Calculators became commercially available, their niche was filled by something much more convenient. But the Calculator Wars only ended when the companies moved onto the next big thing at the turn of the millennium: MP3 Players, IPods and eventually Smart Phones.