Friden 1112 (Hitachi ELCA 12)
Friden 1112 Calculator (1967)
The 1112 marks the time when Friden, under the management of Singer, turned away from in-house technology development under Robert Ragan and began to source electronic calculators from the newly established Japanese electronics industry. The Ragan architecture was based on counters and serial processing, both of which would prove to be technological dead ends, but it’s doubtful that Singer management had any idea about issues such as these. Ragan’s machines had always been costly in design and manufacture, it seems more likely that management would have been attracted to immmediate OEM sourcing at a known low price with no R&D investment or lead time.
The 1112 is in fact a Hitachi ELCA-12. This was Hitachi’s first calculator and was released in Japan in January 1967. It is based on discrete diode-transistor logic using germanium transistors and it’s interesting see how primitive the ELCA-12 is when compared with the Wang 300 family that also used discrete transistor logic and had been on the market for some years when the ELCA-12 was released.
Friden 1112 Calculator Hitachi logo on keyboard
Dentaku museum has the following information for the Hitachi ELCA 12:
ELCA 12
Hitachi's first calculator was released in January 1967.
It was developed with the motto of the ease of solo van and the speed of electrons, and adopts an automatic point-point method and a +-sign display system so that anyone can use it easily, and the operation key is made less.
The calculation contents were possible for addition/subtraction, multiplication, constant multiplication, precision division, sum of product difference, and various mixed calculations.
The circuit adopts the DTL system mainly of the diode which is comparatively cheap and reliable compared with the transistor.
List price 239,000 yen.
At that time, it was initially 500 units per month, and it is not known how many units were actually produced or were scheduled to be produced around summer.
It was also supplied by THE FREEDEN in the U.S. as an OEM as an EC-1112.
Input 10 keys, function key 8 Display 12-digit display and +-sign display by number discharge tube
Calculation contents Addition/subtracting, mixing calculation, constant control, constant calculation, precision calculation, product difference, fully automatic point, +-sign display
Dimensions Width 38cm× depth 50cm× height 23cm Weight 13kg Power Supply AC 90 to 110V, 50/60Hz Power Consumption 40W
Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1967.1.18.
Advertisement for release notice "TEC-12" at this time The name had been adopted but the actual At the time of release, it was "ELCA 12".
Friden 1112 Calculator Display and Keyboard
Compared with Friden’s previous machines the 1112 is a backwards step and one can imagine that Robert Ragan may have been very disappointed at the turn of events. The 1112 is quirky and buggy, does not handle signed multiplication and division consistently, and gives incorrect results on large divisors without error indication. The video below demonstrates many of these quirks:
- powers-on in random state and requires explicit ‘clear’
- addition and subtraction are robust and consistent
- overflow is silent with no error indication
- multiplication quirks:
- both inputs are treated as absolute values
- both inputs are displayed simultaneously
- first input does not retain its decimal point display
- multiplications are limited to 12 digits of total input
- this at least guards against (silent) overflow
- division quirks:
- both inputs are treated as absolute values
- dividend is limited to 10 digits
- 11 digit dividends give correct numeric results with misplaced decimal
- 12 digit dividents give error result
- division errors are silent
Demonstration Video including quirks
Friden 1112 / Hitachi ELCA 12 Demonstration (opens in new tab)