was a Japanese company that manufactured and sold computer-related products headquartered in Taito, Tokyo. It owned the rights to Intel's first

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

, the

Intel 4004 The Intel 4004 was part of the 4 chip MCS-4 micro computer set, released by the Intel, Intel Corporation in November 1971; the 4004 being part of the first commercially marketed microprocessor chipset, and the first in a long line of List of I ...

, which they created in partnership with

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

in 1970. Busicom asked

to design a set of

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

s for a new line of programmable

electronic calculators An electronic calculator is typically a portable Electronics, electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. ...

in 1969. In doing this, they spurred the invention of Intel's first

to be commercialized, the

. Busicom owned the exclusive rights to the design and its components in 1970 but shared them with Intel in 1971. Two other companies have done business as "Busicom" over the years: the ''Nippon Calculating Machine Corp, Ltd'' and subsequently ''Broughtons & Co. (Bristol) Ltd'' of the UK.

Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation, Ltd

History

The ''Nippon Calculating Machine Corp'' was incorporated in 1945 and changed its name in 1967 to ''Business Computer Corporation'', Busicom. Due to a recession in Japan in 1974, Busicom became the first major Japanese company in the calculator industry to fail. Originally, they made Odhner type

mechanical calculators A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or a simulation like an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in si ...

and then moved on to electronic calculators always using state of the art designs. They made the first calculator with a microprocessor for their top-of-the-line machines and they were the first to make calculators with an all-in-one calculator chip, the Mostek MK6010, for their line of inexpensive machines. One of their last mechanical calculators is the HL-21, an Odhner type machine. Their first calculator with a microprocessor is the ''Busicom 141-PF''. Their entry based calculators, the ''Busicom LE-120A (Handy-LE)'' and ''LE-120S (Handy)'', were the first to fit in a pocket and also the first calculators to use an

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corresp ...

display.

Microprocessor

In order to limit production cost, Busicom wanted to design a calculator engine that would be based on a few integrated circuits (ICs), containing some ROMs and

shift register A shift register is a type of digital circuit using a cascade of flip-flop (electronics), flip-flops where the output of one flip-flop is connected to the input of the next. They share a single clock signal, which causes the data stored in the syst ...

s and that could be adapted to a broad range of calculators by just changing the ROM IC chips. Busicom's engineers came up with a design that required 12 ICs and asked Intel, a company founded one year earlier in 1968 to make solid-state

random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of Computer memory, electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows ...

(RAM), to finalize and manufacture their calculator engine. People who were influential in convincing Busicom to switch to using microprocessors were Tadashi Sasaki and

Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He was also credited w ...

. Intel's Ted Hoff was assigned to studying Busicom's design, and came up with a much more elegant, 4 ICs architecture centered on what was to become the 4004 microprocessor surrounded by a mixture of 3 different ICs containing ROM, shift registers, input/output ports and RAM—Intel's first product (1969) was the 3101 Schottky TTL bipolar 64-bit SRAM. Busicom's management agreed to Hoff's new approach and the chips' implementation was led by

Federico Faggin Federico Faggin (, ; born 1 December 1941) is an Italian-American physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 (MCS-4) project and the desig ...

who had previously developed the Silicon Gate Technology at Fairchild Semiconductor. It was this technology that made the design of the microprocessor and the dynamic RAMs. The 4 ICs were delivered to Busicom in January 1971. In mid-1971 Busicom, which had exclusive rights to the design and its components, asked Intel to lower its prices. Intel renegotiated its contract and Busicom gave up its exclusive rights to the chips. A few months later, on November 15, 1971, Intel announced the immediate availability of the first microprocessor

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. The chipset is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chips ...

family, the MCS-4 microcomputer set (all from the Busicom design) with an advertisement in ''Electronic News''.

Broughtons of Bristol

Broughtons of

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

was a company selling and maintaining a broad line of business machines up until they ceased operations in 2016. They used to buy most of their equipment from Busicom and bought the Busicom trade name when Busicom went bankrupt in 1974.

References

External links

{{commons category, Busicom
Busicom 141-PF simulator + Original firmware: disassembled and commented

Busicom Business Machines

Chip Hall of Fame: Intel 4004 Microprocessor
(

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...

website) Defunct manufacturing companies of Japan Electronics companies of Japan Mechanical calculator companies Electronic calculator companies Japan–United Kingdom relations