During the communist era, the dream of many people was to own electronic equipment from the West. Acquiring the coveted computer equipment was downright impossible, but equipment such as calculators and audio systems were somehow obtainable. Today we will take a closer look at one such design. The Privileg Modell 802, as it is referred …
PRIVILEG Modell 802 – Calculator from the former West Germany Read More »
The story of our today’s hero begins in 1987. It is then that the electronic equipment factory in Svetlovodsk (today’s Ukraine) leaves the first calculator Электроника МКУ-1 (Elektronika MKU-1). The device was the result of an idea by officials of the Central Planning Bureau and was designed with a specific purpose in mind – the equipment was to serve high school and college students of the Soviet Union. It would enable them to solve even complex mathematical equations much more quickly and simply.
The great events of the space industry not only capture our attention, but also inspire us to think about the achievements of science and technology. One of the fascinating aspects of the conquest of space is the role that technology has played in these spectacular achievements. However, in the shadow of the famous rockets, astronauts and space stations, there are little-known elements of this space history, such as the Soviet Электроника МК-52 calculator.
Some time ago I talked about one of the first calculators produced in Poland – Elwro 105LN, today it’s time to look at one of its successors.
The Elwro 105LN is one of the first office calculators to be produced at the Elwro Wroclaw plant. This device is a direct successor to the 105L model and, in fact, the first mass-produced one since the early 1970s. The design is very interesting both in terms of technical solutions, but also in terms of history, which is not so obvious.
In my last article on retro equipment, I told you about a pocket calculator manufactured at the Unitra Eltra plant in Bydgoszcz. This time we will also take a closer look at a pocket design, or even several such devices from the times of centrally planned economy, with the difference that these will be calculators signed with the logo of Wroclaw Elwro.
During the communist era, pocket calculators were produced by two companies – Wroclaw’s Elwro and Bydgoszcz’s Unitra Eltra. We will take a look at the constructions made in Upper Silesia at another time, today’s hero will be a somewhat strange and already forgotten construction from the Brda River.
There are cases in which a manufacturer releases a device that is already obsolete on the day of its release, lacking modern solutions. An example of such equipment may be the Soviet calculator Электроника MK-33 (Elektronika MK-33), but are you sure?
In the early 1970s, engineers from the Leningrad Electronic Instrumentation Association “Svetlana” (Светлана) began work on the next calculator, the Электроника C3-07 (Elektronika C3-07). This device was a rather simple design with only fifteen keys, meaning that some functions had to be assigned to the same button. Such a solution was quite problematic, more than once there were mistakes, and also just typing in the right sequence took quite a long time. In the successor to the C3-07, the designers had to eliminate these inconveniences.
A little bit of calculators were produced in socialist Poland. There were models dedicated to the ordinary Kowalski, scientific designs for professors, printing for accountants or pocket calculators for school children. The basic and probably one of the most popular models was the Elwro 144, a classic base design, on which quite a few other calculators produced by the Elwro plant in Wroclaw were based. Today I would like to tell you about the latest evolution of the 144 model, the Elwro 151 calculator.
