We like to hear about retro-East German electronics on Gadget Freak - see Hans' Nixie clock takes a step back in time - and here is another, the Soemtron Calculator.Thanks to reader Bernard Green for sharing this story about an electronic calculator without a single integrated circuit that was designed and built in East Germany in the 1960's.
Not only this, he emphasises, the designers achieved all the functions with few components - there are only 31 flip-flops in the machine and some very intricate logic in order to keep component count as low as possible. Compare this to modern designers for whom minimisation of design has become a lost art, he says.
Bernard's employer in 1967 imported this machine, he tells us, and he was a senior service engineer for it, which included being sent to the factory for a 10 week training course, where he greatly admired the design.
No comments:
Post a Comment