Canon Palmtronic MULTI-8 (MD-8)
Brief history
Since by the mid-1970s, basic calculators were no longer a novelty in households, manufacturers were working to develop more special models to increase their sales. Texas Instruments designed and manufactured electronic devices for a variety of educational purposes — the best known was a calculator for basic arithmetics called Little Professor — and such devices were inexpensive to manufacture in Japan; by the way, the development and mass production of larger, more readable vacuum fluorescent displays can also be linked to Japan. Thanks to years of cooperation with Canon, the MULTI-8 calculator with two-line VFD display has been completed. In addition to the usual operation (SINGLE mode), the current contents of the memory register (MEMORY mode) and the first operand of two-operand functions (PROCESS mode) could be displayed in the upper line. The machine is also capable for square root, sign change, register change and automatic accumulation mode. Machines with similar functions were built only after the spread of LCD displays, from the eighties.
Manufacturer: | Canon Inc. (Japan) |
Mfg. date: | 1977 |
Size: | 7,8×15,5×2,3 cm |
Weight (ready for operate): | n.a. |
Type: | four-function |
Capacity: | 8 digits (input) 2×8 digits (display) 2×8 digits (internal precision) |
Operating logic: | algebraic |
CPU: | Texas Instruments TMC1079NL |
Registers: | 2 standard (with saving the pending operation) 1 constant (with saving the pending operation) 1 memory (with arithmetic and auto-summation) |
Features: | %calculation with percent +/-change sign (direct entry of negative numbers) RVexchange registers (X-Y) Ffloating-point notation Sqrsquare root |
Display: | 2×9+1 digit VFD |
Power: | 3×AA battery or adaptor |
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