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
History of science and technology in Japan fluorescent display (VFD) and rechargeable NiCad batteries. The EL-8 was the first battery-powered handheld calculator. The concept of a single-chip calculator was conceived by Sharp engineer Tadashi Sasaki in 1968. The first truly pocket-sized electronic calculator was the Busicom LE-120A "HANDY", the first single-chip calculator to be built, released in February 1971. The Busicom 141-PF desktop calculator, released in March 1971, was the first computing machine to use a microprocessor, the 4-bit Intel 4004 (co-designed by Busicom's Masatoshi Shima). In 1971, Tadashi Sasaki began research on the use of LCD displays for calculators at Sharp Corporation. In 1973, Sharp commercially