classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu Subj: Re: Firsts Allison J Parent wrote: !<> >First programable calc !<> !<> Then there is the "first solid state electronic calc" which I think goe !<> the Busicom from Japan that employed the first production run of the in !<> 4000 chip set: the 4001 (2048 bit ROM), 4002 (320 bit RAM), 4003 (10 bi ! !No, this was not the first by a long means. I vaguely remember a desktop !HP job that was years earlier. ! !There were designs that were RTL and utililogic and even earlier designs !that were about the size of a desk drawer that were both totally !electronic and to some extent programable. A complete braino on my part: I had wanted to say some like either "first LSI electronic calc" or perhaps "first microprocessor application". Sorry I goofed. As you pointed out in this and a subsequent post there were many "solid state electronic" calculators available by 1971. Hey, for that matter IBM's S/360 shipped transistorized general purpose transistorized computers (running DOS and TOS among others) by 1964, and by 1971 they were even beginning to incorporate integrated circuitry into what would become S/370 computers. Interestingly the architecture (or its modern desecndant) was not put on a single microprocessor until just a few years ago (1995 saw the 3490 CMOS mainframe on a chip). I would not for a moment call these devices mere calculators though (despite the early reluctance of IBM's marketing department to call things like the 701 a "computer" for fear of upsetting the folks employed in that occupation in the 1950's). Peter Prymmer