Canon was a well-established Japanese designer and manufacturer of lenses and cameras. In the early 1960s Canon’s optical designers were demanding more calculating power to support their work. The company had broad technical skills and at around the same time upper management had adopted a policy of using these skills to diversify into electronic office equipment as a future growth area for the company. Thus there were several motivations for Canon to undertake the development of an electronic calculator and when an unrelated electronic development project was cancelled an engineering staff became available.
Canon was an OEM supplier for Monroe and many Canon models were sold in USA with Monroe badges.
Canon 130
Canon 130 Calculator Canon 130 (May 1964)
Development of the Canon 130 began in 1962, a prototype was demonstrated in May 1964 and it was commercially released in October 1964. Its particular features included a 10-key keyboard, automatic decimal point management and a Canon-designed edge-lid incandescent display system. It’s an interesting machine from an engineering perspective with many features that can be related to its being a first attempt with a new technology:
- architecture based on counters, similar to mechanical calculators
- static logic design, simpler to design but expensive in transistors
- static display architecture requires a massive wiring burden
- fully soldered construction makes servicing very difficult
- in-house display technology depends on incandescent lamps and is difficult to service
The machine was in fact quite successful in Japanese and export markets, with over 6000 units produced and sold despite a price similar to that of a small car.
Canon 161
Canon 161 Calculator Canon 161 (Nov 1965)
The Canon 161 was released in late 1965, based on the same architecture as the 130 with many engineering improvements achieved over a short time.
- 16- rather than 13 digits
- storage registers
- removable PCBs
- a service port and associated diagnostic controller
Integrated circuit technology was maturing rapidly in the late 1960s and discrete transistor machines were overtaken by cheaper and more capable IC machines. The 161 was discontinued in 1968.
Canon 163 (Monroe 990)
The 163 was Canon’s first IC calculator, introduced in early 1968 and based on small-scale DTL chips - gates and flipflops. DTL was a short-lived IC logic family, rapidly displaced by the 74xx TTL family. The 163 is a serial architecture machine using a magnetostrictive delay line for working store.
The 163 offers more function in a smaller package, in particular:
- square root
- storage memories
- nixie tube display
Canon 164P
The 164P was the final development of Canon’s TTL discrete IC calculators, introduced in 1969. Machines such as the 163 must have been sufficiently successful to motivate pushing the architecture to a final level that included:
- four data memories for constants or intermediate results
- 64 step learn-mode programmability
- optical punch card reader for program loading
The 164P was moderately capable by the standards of its day but the lack of any conditional branch instructions was a significant limit compared with other machines. In any case, the days of discrete IC machines were numbered by the rapid progress of MSI and LSI ICs, calculators-on-a chip being just around the corner.
Canon used its technical knowledge and financial capital to be a pioneer in electronic calculators. It continued to deploy these assets and maintained its place in the market as new technologies replaced the old, unlike many of the original calculator companies. Canon has kept up with developments, maintained its place as an important designer and manufacturer, and continues to be a significant calculator company sixty years after the original model 130.