The Bowmar Brain: the first American pocket calculator

1971 · FORT WAYNE'S PRODUCT, TEXAS'S CHIP

The machine: The Business section tells Bowmar Instrument Corporation — founded in 1951 by Edward A. White, who had learned his trade in Farnsworth-Capehart's electromechanical works — and its calculator lines; this entry tests the famous claim. In the autumn of 1971 Bowmar shipped the 901B, the "Bowmar Brain": a four-function calculator with an eight-digit red LED display, measuring about 5.2 by 3.0 by 1.5 inches, priced at $240, built around a single Texas Instruments calculator chip — Fort Wayne's product engineering on Texas's silicon, the division of invention stated plainly. The Allen County history site's form of the claim, that Bowmar "introduced the first hand-held calculator," does not survive the year's chronology: Sharp's EL-8, a handheld, reached the Japanese market in January 1971, and Busicom's LE-120A "HANDY" of the same early year was the first truly pocket-sized calculator, the first with an LED display and the first on a single chip. The title the record does support is the one the calculator histories give the 901B: the first American-made pocket-sized calculator — and a scholarly history of the period (the "Death of the Slide Rule" account) adds that it, or a near-contemporary Bowmar model, was probably the first consumer device anywhere to use a light-emitting-diode display, a judgment carried here with its author's own "probably." Bowmar became for a time one of the world's largest calculator makers, building for Sears, Radio Shack and Commodore, before the calculator price war took it into bankruptcy in 1976. The Business section's calculator entry carries the stronger trade consensus around the company's LED and pocket-size firsts; the sequence above is the strongest the primary chronology supports.

Sources:

1. Vintagecalculators.com, "Bowmar" — the 901B "Bowmar Brain" of autumn 1971, its display, size and $240 price, its Texas Instruments chip, the OEM production and the 1976 bankruptcy.
2. Wikipedia, "Calculator" — the 1971 sequence: Sharp EL-8 (January 1971), Busicom LE-120A as the first pocket-sized, first LED, first single-chip machine, and the 901B (September 1971) as "the first American-made pocket-sized calculator."
3. "Death of the Slide Rule" (IEEE Spectrum account) — the Bowmar 901B as "probably the first consumer device to use a light-emitting diode display."
4. ACGSI, Fort Wayne Places — the "first hand-held calculator" form of the claim, corrected here; Business-expanded, this history — the Bowmar firm and its calculator lines.