Calculator This led the way to the first credit-card-sized calculators, such as the Casio "Mini Card LC-78" of 1978, which could run for months of normal use on button cells. There were also improvements to the electronics inside the calculators. All of the logic functions of a calculator had been squeezed into the first "calculator on a chip" integrated circuits (ICs) in 1971, but this was leading edge technology of the time and yields were low and costs were high. Many calculators continued to use two or more ICs, especially the scientific and the programmable ones, into the late 1970s. The
Sumlock ANITA calculator £50,000 GBP but to be competitive with mechanical calculators the target selling price of the electronic calculator was in the range £350 to £400. The first all-electronic prototype was demonstrated to the board of the company in December 1958. This prototype was later donated by the company to the Science Museum in London, where Kitz had originally had the idea for the electronic calculator. It has been on display surrounded by the mechanical calculators that it was to make obsolete. There then followed several years of great effort in finding electronic and mechanical components suitable for production, testing them for