Sharp EL-122

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The first affordable pocket calculator, the Casio Mini introduced in the Japanese market in August 1972, and drew the attention of the competition to the viability of similar machines with a much simpler design and fewer functions than standard eight-digit calculators with floating point arithmetic. Half a year later, in March 1973, Sharp appeared with the EL-120, which has accuracy of 12-digit, but was only able to display three digits at a time. Its successor, the landscape designed EL-121 and the usual shaped EL-122 appeared in 1974. The only difference was that the EL-122 had a CE function to clear erroneous entries; in other respects, both machines calculated results with 12-digit precision with full floating decimal point, but the display showed either the first or the last 6 digits at once: the identification was aided by the fact that the LED below the display was lit when the first six digits were displayed. The low prices achieved by simple six-digit calculators also had an impact on other models, too, so slowly all manufacturers switched to eight-digit calculators, so Sharp did not release more six-digit models.