[cctalk] Re: Wang Laboratories calculators (Was Bowmar handheld calculator)

Fred Cisin wrote It was actually available before 1970. It was Wang Laboratories' 300-Series of electronic calculators. The "tiny" part was the visible part, which was just the keyboard and Nixie tube display. It connected to an electronics package which was usually put under a desk or sometimes even quite a distance from the keyboard/display unit. The punched card programming peripheral sat between the keyboard/display and the calculator electronics package, and effectively "pressed keys" on the keyboard designated by the punches on the card, at high speed. On all but the 370 and 380 keyboard devices, the programs punched into the cards were simple linear programs without test & branch capability, or looping. Looping could be manually done by just restarting the program at the beginning, and continuing to do so until the answer converged on the final result. There were also the somewhat larger 360KT and 360KR keyboards that had built-in diode ROM programs that calculated trig functions by sending the keycodes to the electronics package to carry out the operations necessary to perform the trig functions. There were a number of different electronics packages that were available, with the low-end model (the 300E) having access to only the basic four math functions. The 310E added square root and x^2, the 320E added natural logarithm and e^x functions to the 310. The 360E added four store/recall memory registers along with the functions of the 320E. The last of the 300-series was the 362E electronics package that provided access to ten memory registers, each of which could be split in half to store two five-digit numbers, along with the math functions of the 360E. Then there were the SE type electronics packages. To my knowledge, there were the 310SE, 320SE, and 360SE. The SE electronics packages took the core calculating logic of the 310E/320E/360E and stuffed some multiplexing logic around it, allowing up to four keyboard/display units to be connected up to it that operated in a round-robin timesharing mode. The 370 Programmer Keyboard Unit included a similar punched card reader, but there was extra logic inside the keyboard that allowed conditional testing and branching capability. Up to four of these card readers could be daisy-chained to the 370 keyboard to allow programs up 320 steps. The program codes consumed 6 bits, so each column of the 40 column card (a standard IBM punched card, but with pre-scored holes every other column) could contain two instructions, allowing 80 instruction steps per card. The 380 Programmer Keyboard Unit was similar to the 370 in terms of capability, but instead of using punched cards for "storing" the program, the program steps were recorded on what was essentially an 8-Track tape cartridge that was inserted into a slot on the back panel of the 380. The tape in the cartridge was in a loop, and was positioned by a rather noisy ratcheting system akin to a stepping relay that moved the tape forward. Branching was accomplished by moving the tape forward until the target location was found. Depending on where the branch was targeted, the tape could have to move to the end of the program, then continue moving until the beginning of the program is found, then searching for the loop target. This operation could consume quite a bit of time. The tape cartridge allowed for considerably larger programs, but was quite slow in terms of tape positioning for branching and looping. The initial announcement of the 300-series calculator occurred in 1965, with the 300E/310E/320E electronics units, and 300K, 310K, 320K keyboard units, along with the CP-1 punched card reader, of which up to four could be connected daisy-chain style between the keyboard unit and the electronics unit. Later the 360E electronics package was added, and the 360K keyboard unit for the 360E added keys to access the four memory registers. A bit later, the 360KT and 360KR trig keyboards were introduced, with the 360KT accepting arguments and results in Degrees, and the 360KR in Radians. The 310SE and 320SE four-user electronics packages came out sometime in 1967. The 360SE four-user electronics package came out in 1968, and also the 370 Programmer and 371 card reader as well as the 380 Programmer. Lastly, sometime in late '68 or early '69, the 362E electronics package came out, and a 362K keyboard (which was identical to a 360K keyboard but with different keycap legends for the memory keys) was introduced with the 362E. The 362E marked the end of the 300-Series. There were a lot of peripheral devices that were available for the 370 and 380 programmers, including a Teletype interface that connected a Model 33ASR Teletype to the calculator, with ability to accept input from the Teletype and print output to the Teletype, as well as being able to read program steps from the Teletype's punched paper tape reader, add-on memory units for more register storage. There was also an Item Counter that connected between any of the keyboard units and the electronics package that would count depressions of various keys on an electromechanical counter to aid in calculations such as averages, etc. There was also a simple column printer that would provide printed output of the number in the calculator's display that was also connected between any keyboard unit and the electronics package. A specially modified IBM Selectric typewriter that had Wang-made solenoids and linkages to actuate the keys and functions of the typewriter was also available that could print output from calculations. There are also some peripherals that could be used to interface the calculators to external digital devices such as test and measurement equipment made by other manufacturers of such equipment. Wang also would OEM the electronics package guts to other manufacturers. One company even made a general purpose computer system that used one of the 300-series electronics packages as its arithmetic unit. Wang also offered a modular computer system called the 4000 (originally named the 390, but was changed before introduction) that used a standardized bus structure to connect the logic of an electronics package as the arithmetic unit, along with other modules that would contain storage, programming capability, and I/O interfaces. For quite some time, Wang Labs were the only calculator manufacturer that provided built-in calculation of logarithmic functions that were /not/ pre-coded sequences of keypresses that were executed like a program, but were actually hard-coded algorithms in the calculator's logic that provided almost instantaneous results. Dr. Wang invented the logic to do this, and got a patent for it. It was quite ingenious, and was able to calculate logarithms to twelve digit accuracy using only addition/subtraction and shift operations, and do so in an average of about 300 milliseconds. The weird part about the calculators in the 300-series is that they used logarithms to perform multiplication and division (which simplified the operations into addition of logarithms of the operands, then an anti-logarithm to get the result of a multiplication, and subtraction of the logarithm of the second operand from the logarithm of the first operand, followed by an anti-logarithm to derive the result. The issue with this is that most logarithms are not able to be 100% accurately represented in the 14 digit (10 digits displayed) capacity of the logic, and as a result, some multiplication and division operations that would normally result in an integer answer providing an answer that was not quite accurate. For example, 3 X 3 would equal 8.999999998, but a bit of additional logic for multiply and divide would round the result up to 9.000000000 . In some cases, the error was enough that the rounding wouldn't give the integer answer expected, though. All of the answers provided, even with slight errors due to imperfect representation of the logarithms were within most tolerances for engineering and scientific calculations. The logic of the machines was completely transistorized, using diode-transistor gates. No integrated circuits anywhere. The working memory of the calculators was stored in a magnetic core array in the electronics package. The electronics packages consisted of a backplane (hand-wired in earlier machines, later on a circuit board) with a bunch of small (roughly 3x5-inch) circuit boards packed with components. The power supply was a conventional linear power supply with Zener/transistor regulation. The basic keyboard units just contained a board with transistor drivers for the Nixie tube displays, and diode encoding for the keys on the keyboard. The key switches were standard micro-switch units with a ring pressed onto the key-stalk that would press down on the actuator for the micro-switch. Key travel was very short, but had a positive "click" as the micro-switch closed when the key was depressed. The 300-Series electronic calculators put Wang Laboratories on the map as a leader in higher-end electronic calculators, and made a fortune for the company and its shareholders. In 1968, when HP introduced the 9100A, Dr. An Wang, the founder and CEO of Wang Labs was secretly shown a production version of the 9100A before it was introduced. The presentation of the machine was provided to Dr. Wang by Dave Hewlett, one of the founders of HP. When Dr. Wang saw what the HP 9100A could do, he was visibly shaken. When the presentation was over, he left the room saying "We've got to get to work", meaning that it was clear that the 300-Series was now completely obsoleted by the 9100A, and that Wang Labs had better get busy with a new generation of calculators to counter HP's amazing calculator that was much smaller, much more capable, had computer-like programming capability, and was still made only with transistors and magnetic core memory. Wang did not have their counter to the HP 9100A/B calculators ready until mid-1970, the Wang 700-Series. The 700-Series calculators were serious machines, very computer-like, with large amounts of core memory, very high speed using DTL and TTL small-scale integrated circuit logic, and large I/O expansion capabilities. They were a solid match for the HP 9100A/B, but by the time they got them to market, HP had already introduced it's 9800-series machines, which had the essence of a computer as their main logic, with a "program" that made the machines run. The computer at the heart of the 9800 series was a somewhat slimmed down, bit-serial version of HP's first minicomputer, the HP 2116A. The 9800-series were larger machines than the 9100A/B, but offered extensive expandability and I/O capabilities. The pinnacle of the 9800 series was the 9830A, which was programmable by the user in the BASIC computer language, and was more a computer than a calculator, but HP still considered it a calculator to make it more marketable because the term "computer" had connotations of being a very expensive piece of capital equipment, while a calculator was basically an expense item. You can learn more about the Wang 300-Series calculators by going to https://oldcalculatormuseum.com/calcman.html#MFG-WANG . There is also information on HP's 9100B, as well as most of the 9800-series that can be found by scrolling up on that same page, as well as many other electronic calculators exhibited in the Old Calculator Museum website, as well as physically in the Old Calculator Museum. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum https://oldcalculatormuseum.com Beavercreek, Oregon USA P.S. Some of the dates above may not be exactly correct, and there may be some other minor errors or missing information because I typed this strictly straight out of my head without access to any reference material. The website has the correct information to the greatest extent possible given the amount of time that has elapsed since these machines were new.