Friden Calculating Machine Company (Friden, Inc.) was an American manufacturer of typewriters and mechanical, later electronic calculators. It was founded by

Carl Friden Carl Friden (April 11, 1891 – April 29, 1945) was a Swedish-born, American mechanical engineer and businessman who founded the Friden Calculating Machine Company ( Friden, Inc.). Background Carl Mauritz Fredrik Friden was born in Alvesta in Kro ...

San Leandro, California San Leandro (Spanish language, Spanish for "Leander of Seville, St. Leander") is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area; between Oakland, California, Oakland to the northwe ...

, in 1934.

History

In 1957, Friden purchased the Commercial Controls Corporation of

Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...

. This gave them the

Flexowriter The Friden Flexowriter was a teleprinter produced by the Friden, Inc., Friden Calculating Machine Company. It was a heavy-duty electric typewriter capable of being driven not only by a human typing, but also automatically by several methods, inc ...

teleprinter, an electric typewriter capable of being used as part of

unit record equipment Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, well before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using Electromechanics, electromechanical machines collectively referred to as unit record equipment, electric accounting ...

developed in World War II for the Department of the Navy to automatically type "regret to inform you" letters to the survivors of fallen servicemen, the predecessor to modern computers. The Flexowriter could be attached to Friden calculators and driven by

paper tape Five- and eight-hole wide punched paper tape Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program loop Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data st ...

to produce bills and other form letters which had names of customers and amounts of bills filled in automatically. Friden eventually expanded into production of a few models of early transistorized computers. Friden introduced the first fully

transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...

ized desktop electronic calculator, the model EC-130 in June 1963, designed by Robert "Bob" Appleby Ragen. This machine had a 13-digit capacity and a 5-inch

CRT CRT or Crt most commonly refers to: * Cathode-ray tube, a display * Critical race theory, an academic framework of analysis CRT may also refer to: Law * Charitable remainder trust, United States * Civil Resolution Tribunal, Canada * Columbia ...

display. It used a magnetostrictive

delay-line memory Delay-line memory is a form of computer memory, mostly obsolete, that was used on some of the earliest Digital data, digital computers, and is reappearing in the form of #Optical_delay_lines, optical delay lines. Like many modern forms of electro ...

, to save money on expensive transistors. The EC-130 sold for $2,200 (), or about three times the price of comparable electromechanical calculators of the time. It was the first calculator to use

reverse Polish notation Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as reverse Łukasiewicz notation, Polish postfix notation or simply postfix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators ''follow'' their operands, in contrast to prefix or Polish notation ...

(RPN), which eliminated the need for

parentheses A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

to specify the

order of operations In mathematics and computer programming, the order of operations is a collection of rules that reflect conventions about which operations to perform first in order to evaluate a given mathematical expression. These rules are formalized with a ...

in complex calculations. The successor model EC-132, introduced in April 1965, added a square root function. In 1965 the company was purchased by Singer Business Machines, part of

Singer Corporation Singer Corporation is an American manufacturer of consumer sewing machines, first established as I. M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac Singer, Isaac M. Singer with New York lawyer Edward Cabot Clark, Edward C. Clark. Best known for its sewing mac ...

, but continued operation under the Friden brand name until 1974. The Singer – Friden Research Center in Oakland, California, later moved to Palo Alto, California (1965 to 1970), was unable to develop a pocket-sized calculator to compete with the corresponding new Japanese products, such as the

Busicom was a Japanese company that manufactured and sold computer-related products headquartered in Taito, Tokyo. It owned the rights to Intel's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, which they created in partnership with Intel in 1970. Busicom aske ...

, based on

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 ...

in 1971, Casio Mini and Sharp EL-805 in 1972.

In popular culture

An early Friden electromechanical calculator is shown operating in closeup in the 1949 British film ''

The Small Back Room ''The Small Back Room'' (U.S. title: ''Hour of Glory'') is a 1949 film by the British producer-writer-director team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring David Farrar and Kathleen Byron and featuring Jack Hawkins and Cyril Cusac ...

''. Friden calculators, with their hypnotic mechanical movements, populate the hundreds of desks in the office of the imaginary "Consolidated Life" insurance company in the 1960 motion picture ''

The Apartment ''The Apartment'' is a 1960 American romantic comedy-drama film directed and produced by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with I. A. L. Diamond. It stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray, with Ray Walston and Edie ...

''.

References

Bibliography

External links

{{commons category, Friden
Friden tribute web site (archived 2019)
Electromechanical calculator sold from 1949 to 1966
Friden Flexowriter
combination typewriter and

punch, designed by IBM during the 1940s and bought out by Friden in the late 1950s (Retrieved April 10, 2007)
Friden EC-130
Electronic calculator (1963)

Electronic calculator (1965)

Electronic printing calculator with DTL logic
Singer/Friden 1162
Electronic calculator with DTL logic and CRT display
Friden/Singer 1112
with 507 transistors and twelve digit

Nixie tube A Nixie tube ( ), or cold cathode display, is an electronics, electronic device used for display device, displaying numerals or other information using glow discharge. The glass tube contains a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes, shaped like ...

display, designed and built by

Hitachi () is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1910 and headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo. The company is active in various industries, including digital systems, power and renewable ener ...

Mechanical calculator companies Electromechanical calculator companies Electronic calculator companies Companies based in San Leandro, California Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1974 Manufacturing companies established in 1934 1934 establishments in California 1974 disestablishments in California American companies disestablished in 1974 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer systems companies