Facit

Facit (Facit AB) was an industrial corporation and manufacturer of office products. It was based in Åtvidaberg, Sweden, and founded in 1922 as AB Åtvidabergs Industrier. Facit AB, a manufacturer of mechanical calculators, was incorporated into the corporation the same year. In 1932, the first ten-digit calculator was manufactured by Åtvidaberg Industries, it was named FACIT and became a great success.

By the early 1960s the corporation had a total of 8,000 employees with subsidiaries in over 100 countries, and the subsidiary Facit had come to dominate the business of the corporation. In 1965 the entire corporation changed its name to Facit AB. The following year, it acquired its competitor Addo, which was maintained as a separate subsidiary. Under the popular leadership of Gunnar Ericsson, Facit focused increasingly on its mechanical calculators, branding, marketing and global expansion. This strategy was referred to as "The New Deal". Throughout the 1960s Facit experienced an increased growth and a high profitability.

Sharp QT-8D

The Sharp QT-8D Micro Compet, a small electronic desktop calculator, was the first mass-produced calculator to have its logic circuitry entirely implemented with LSI (large-scale integration) integrated circuits (ICs) based on MOS (metal-oxide-semiconductor) technology. When it was introduced in late 1969, it was one of the smallest electronic calculators ever produced commercially. Previous electronic calculators had been about the size of a typewriter and had logic circuits built from numerous discrete transistors and diodes or small- to medium-scale ICs. The QT-8D's logic circuits were packed into just four LSI ICs.

The QT-8D was released in Japan at a price of 99,800 Japanese yen, a new low for electronic calculators. The retail price in the United States was $395 in 1970, equivalent to about $2,200 in 2010.

The QT-8D only performs the four basic arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Like many calculators intended for business use, the QT-8D adds and subtracts in the style of an adding machine: after entering each number, the operator presses either the white += key, to add it to the current total, or the red −= key, to subtract it from the total. However, the QT-8D is unusual in that multiplication and division share a single key ×÷. To multiply or divide, the operator enters the first number, presses ×÷, enters the second number, and then presses either += to multiply or −= to divide. The resulting product or quotient is then added to or subtracted from the total in the usual way, by pressing += or −=.

Sharp EL-8

The Sharp EL-8, also known as the ELSI-8, was one of the earliest mass-produced hand-held electronic calculators and the first hand-held calculator to be made by Sharp. Introduced around the start of 1971, it was based on Sharp's preceding QT-8D and QT-8B compact desktop calculators and used the same logic circuits, but it was redesigned to fit in a much smaller case.

Most electronic calculators before the EL-8 were intended for desktop use. Sharp's predecessor to the EL-8, the battery-powered QT-8B, was just a portable version of a compact desk calculator. The EL-8 was much smaller, small enough to be used in one's hand: 164 mm (6.46 in) long, 102 mm (4.02 in) wide, and 70 mm (2.76 in) thick, and weighing 0.72 kg (1.59 lb) with batteries. Although it was still too bulky to easily fit in a pocket, it was an important step toward the development of the pocket calculator.

The EL-8's original price in Japan was 84,800 Japanese yen. The U.S. retail price in 1971 was $345, equivalent to about $1,850 in 2010.