History of science and technology in Japan the idea to Kihara. The Walkman was commercially released in 1979. Kei cars are a category of small automobiles invented in Japan, including passenger cars, vans, and pickup trucks. They are designed to exploit local tax and insurance relaxations, and in more rural areas are exempted from the requirement to certify that adequate parking is available for the vehicle. The world's first all-electric compact calculator was the Casio Computer Company's Model 14-A, released in 1957. The first electronic desktop calculator with on-board memory was the Casio 001, released in 1965. In 1967, Casio released the AL-1000, the world's first programmable
Calculator led to alliances between Japanese calculator manufacturers and U.S. semiconductor companies: Canon Inc. with Texas Instruments, Hayakawa Electric (later renamed Sharp Corporation) with North-American Rockwell Microelectronics (later renamed Rockwell International), Busicom with Mostek and Intel, and General Instrument with Sanyo. By 1970, a calculator could be made using just a few chips of low power consumption, allowing portable models powered from rechargeable batteries. The first portable calculators appeared in Japan in 1970, and were soon marketed around the world. These included the Sanyo ICC-0081 "Mini Calculator", the Canon Pocketronic, and the Sharp QT-8B "micro Compet". The Canon Pocketronic was a