The Real Story Behind The First Handheld Calculator

The pocket calculator might seem like the most banal of obsolete pants-transported technologies, but it was actually a pretty miraculous little doohickey back in the day. Along with radios and televisions, calculators used to take up a great deal of physical space, owing largely to components like vacuum tubes which were essential to their design. In just a couple of decades, the tech had shrunk down to a single board housed in a small plastic shell. Today, of course, calculators are incorporated into smartphones, along with endless other applications and functionality, but handheld calculators are still very much a thing, if you happen to want one. Here's the truth about the invention of the first handheld calculator.