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
Sinclair Wrist Calculator Sinclair Wrist Calculator The Sinclair Wrist Calculator was a wrist-worn calculator produced by Sinclair Instrument and introduced in 1977. The Wrist Calculator was launched in February 1977 by Sinclair Instrument, a company established in parallel to Sinclair Radionics when the latter started to encounter financial difficulties. It was only available as a mail-order kit, and cost around . Despite the difficulty in assembling the kit due to the small size of the parts and their variability in specification, 10,000 were sold around the world. 20,000 were exported to the United States, but most went unsold and were returned to Sinclair.