The Rapid Collapse of the Swedish Mechanical Calculator Industry

Beautifully made with 2,300 crafted parts, the Facit mechanical calculator first entered the market in 1932.
And for the next forty years it basically stayed the same.
The Swedish company that made it, Facit, employed thousands of people around the world to build and sell them.
Then over the span of just two years, they went from millions of dollars in profit to annihilation.
In this video, we are going to talk about a faded Swedish icon.
Links:
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[@mikaelholm2456]

Really nice job. I live in Åtvidaberg and FACIT is still spoken about. The office/factory complex seen in the video is a high school nowadays. A bit more odd facts around FACIT... In the late 60's FACIT built a huge factory plant just outside Åtvidaberg and they even considered having an airport for freight flights, but that plan was scrapped. Gunnar Ericsson had a huge interest in Football/Soccer (he was president of the Swedish Football association, as well as a member of IOC) and FACIT had connections all over the world. So when the Brazilian national soccer team in 1966 needed a place do their preparation for the World Cup, the natural place was Kopparvallen in Åtvidaberg. So Pelé and the gang came to Åtvidaberg and even played the local team ÅFF. ÅFF took the lead with 2-1 but ended up loosing 2-8 as they should ;)

[@maxheadrom3088]

FACIT machines were all over in Brazil before those newfangled electronic things appeared. I believe we have a few mechanical calculators at home - FACIT.

[@newmankidman5763]

Mikael Holm, fascinating. Thank you.

[@davidvincent8929]

WOW

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

I live not far from Åtvidaberg and while I wasn’t around at the time I’ve heard about Facit from the older generation. It was an interesting time when a country as small as Sweden made computers and TVs and all sorts of equipment these days only made in China. Åtvidaberg is also a very small town even by Swedish standards with only a population of 7000 people so it is extra impressive they manage to become big. Too bad they failed to keep up with the times.

[@BillyLapTop]

Excellent presentation. I remember when the pocket calculators hit the market in the early 70's. I purchased a brand X model for 15 dollars US and was blown away by its ability to calculate square roots. It felt miraculous. What an incredible revolution.

[@A3Kr0n]

Where did you get a calculator for $15 in the 70's? They were a lot more than that.

[@sunnohh]

Going to guess the late 70s

[@gandalfgreyhame3425]

Yeah, I remember in high school when this guy showed up in class with the first ever consumer market TI (Texas Instruments) calculator, which could only do simple math (no square roots). This was around 1972, and it was a luxury item, costing around $100. The first scientific calculators came out a few years later and cost $300 or more. HP came out with their programmable calculators with Reverse Polish Notation. Hilarious that they forced everybody to calculate with Reverse Polish Notation. Prices quickly dropped and became more affordable by the mid to late 1970s.

[@BillyLapTop]

@@A3Kr0n A friend of mine purchased a whole lot of unbranded pocket calculators in early '73. They were chip based basic units that included the square root function. He sold them for 15 bucks a pop and they went like hot cakes. Hey, maybe they fell off a truck for all I know. Almost 50 years later another friend of mine still has his original unit and it still works. They used high current consuming displays and were battery killers to say the least but the novelty then out weighed the negative power consumption.

[@grizwoldphantasia5005]

I went into the US Navy in 1972, got out in 1976, and was astounded at how fast slide rules had been replaced by cheap calculators. Computers had gone from million dollar air conditioned beasts with false floors and card readers to desktop cheapos with CRT terminals. I felt like Rip van Winkle in just 4 years.

[@mercury9385]

It is said that engineers at Facit was using digital calculators to test the accuracy of their mechanical units... whiteout seeing the writings on the wall.

[@akatsuki6371]

Engineers probably did, upper management did not.

[@mercury9385]

@@akatsuki6371 you are probably right...

[@crimsonlightbinder]

wow, that's crazy. Anyway, it's clear that management was way over its head

[@mumiemonstret]

Funny, whether true or not. What we can be almost certain of though is that the engineers that developed the electronic calculators used mechanical calculators... :)

[@CHMichael]

That's funny

[@yourt00bz]

Noooooo! I just invested!!

[@wilkinlow]

You still using internet explorer?

[@yourt00bz]

@@wilkinlow no what’s that? I need browser client for the World Wide Web, internet protocols are already handled by my tcp stack and gopher etc. So I’m using NCSA Mosaic as an upgrade to Midas WWW. It’s pretty fast, reloads page from bad connnection, has bookmarks instead of having to paste the U R L s into your home page’s hypertext markup like some loon.

[@wilkinlow]

@@yourt00bz holy shit why had I never thought of it before? You're a genius!

[@yourt00bz]

@@wilkinlow I’ve been using the World Wide Web system to view hypertext files for a long time, you’ll get it, don’t worry. A worldwide golden age in philosophy, science, debate and understanding is just around the corner. Where peers exchange ideas freely! A veritable library of Alexandria at our fingertips, imagine Plato’s Republic and the bible only minutes or an hour of downloading away! the Greek forum of ideas and forensic intellect in one place! A Renaissance is coming!

[@makerspace533]

Jerry Merryman et al, at TI, filed a patent for the handheld in 1965. It was designed to demonstrate a technology TI was developing. The technology, discretionary LSI, was based on the idea of making an entire wafer, which at that time was only 1.25 inches in diameter, a larger number of gates that were independent. The wafer was probed and a map of good gates was created for that particular wafer. Then a metal mask was designed to interconnect the gates to produce the desired function. Jerry's calculator used 3 of these wafers. They were kind of funny looking, because of power distribution problems, they were cover with bonding wires to carry power. I joined the TI calculator department in 1973. At that time it was just part of the semiconductor division. We were building DataMath 4 function calculators that had about 100 parts. It used a PMOS chip that required a lot of glue logic and power supplies. Three years later we were build the TI 1200 at a rate of 75,000 per day. I designed production test equipment, it was a helluva ride. I was drafted by the corporate engineering center where I got to meet Jerry. We became good friends and would spend Saturdays looking for treasures in the surplus and junk yards in Dallas.

[@craigslist6988]

Dang, quite a summary. I'm sure there's a ton more detail... you should look into doing one of those public archive interviews for the library of Congress. The only one that jumps to mind is Story Corps but I know there are others, maybe one more history or topic focused. Not sure if this makes sense, would I be right to infer that the 1965 design, despite being publicly known vis patent, was not expected to be viable anytime soon due to that custom process of testing all the transistors and creating a specific mask to use the working ones? That would never scale well so then no one was worried, but then the transistor manufacturing defect rate plummeted, and suddenly they become massively scalable and the most expensive part (human testing and choosing mask) was entirely removed.

[@jed-henrywitkowski6470]

Let's here more about those "surplus junkyards".

[@djmips]

RIP Jerry - June 17, 1932 - February 27, 2019

[@bob456fk6]

I had the pleasure to meet Jerry Merryman at a party for mutual friend. Jerry was a really nice guy and was willing to talk to me very cordially, even though he was way above me on the technical scale.

[@mikehebdentrains]

A fascinating slice of computing history - I learned to use a mech calculator in 1973 (UK Govt). An early lesson was that to multiple a sum by 9, it was quicker to shift it one place (x 10) and then shift it back and turn the handle once in reverse to subtract the original sum and yes there was a bell involved in reverse turning, as others have noted. For important work there was an electric "add-lister" (which had a paper roll) that produced a printed copy of the calculations. We got "issued" with pens and pencils too!

[@kanzi1958]

Great stuff, as usual! My dad who was an accountant kept using a mechanical calculator all through the 70's, while I, as a physics student, was using my brand new programmable HP25. I got my first pocket calculator in 1972 while in high school from my 70 years old aunt who somehow got it from a friend or something. Of course she had no use for it. At the time, they still sold for more than $100 Canadian dollars, so it was a pretty nice gift!

[@trtrhr]

i am confused, what is so special about the calculator? You can buy it at a store. Why is it so special? i just don't understand the importance of this video. IT'S A FUCKING calculator. all you do is math with numbers.

[@morisnakus6108]

Ygritte, You don’t need to tell that to the whole internet. It is always better to keep your secret within your family and friends, because now, everyone knows it.

[@saretgnasoh7351]

@@trtrhr your comprehension ability really low.

[@himanshusingh5214]

Hi friend Ygritte. The hedgehog saves us from Cringe.

[@michaelmoorrees3585]

​@@trtrhr - Value in ALL items change over time. We can now buy not only a simple "4-function", but more complex "scientific" calculator at the dollar store, so we give them little value. But at one time, they did not exist. Those old mechanical calculators allowed bookkeepers, to add, and subtract, 1000s of calculations in a given work day. The alternative was doing them by had, like you did in grade school, but maybe only a few hundred, in a day. Those calculators, though costing more than a car, greatly increased productivity. That's why they could command those high prices, as they where worth every dime spent on them. Modern semiconductor electronics has changed everything. The first computers were, one off custom made, and cost millions. The Sperry Univac (1st commercial computer) cost 100s of thousands, when a $100,000 could buy at least 10 houses, in the US, in the early 1950s. Even the DEC PDP-8, cost ~$10K, in the late 1960s, which could buy two Cadillacs a that time. Now, your cheapest bottom end smartphone can easily out do any of those 100x over. I have to do a video on relative value changes, over time, between several items.

[@phbrinsden]

I’m 81 now and remember joining a petrochemical company out of university in 1965 in the UK. I started my first year in a plastics lab and did a lot of calculating on a mechanical calculator. By the time I was ready to start my international marketing job in head office a year later the lab had its first desktop calculator. That would be 1966. In the latter 60s I did my international currency calculations while on the road on a circular slide rule (still have it). Early in the 70s I was using a Sinclair and when I was selling behind the iron curtain it was viewed with envy and amazement. In about 8 years I went from mechanical calculator to pocket calculator. Now my retirement is enriched by a MacBook Air with M2 and a full Apple ecosystem! It’s been quite a journey!

[@OB1canblowme]

I'm a Swedish machinist in my early 20s with an interest in reading about sometimes collecting Swedish industrial history. Never even knew this existed. Also, I've seen some of your earlier videos and your channel was the last one i thought were going to cover a topic like this. Was quite surprised😂

[@mikaelkjericsson]

Great video, as always. I live in a neighbouring city to Åtvidaberg. The huge factory building is still there, reminding everybody what happens if you don't stay relevant.

[@williamogilvie6909]

I often wondered what happened to Facit Addo. They had an office in Vancouver in the early '70s. At the time I had some electronic knowledge and a lot of mechanical ability. I interviewed with them in 1974, with the idea of getting more electronics experience. The manager told me to come back after I complete a 2 year electronics tech program. That inspired me to return to university and eventually get an EE degree. While calculators were in wide use then, I used a slide rule during my first semester. When I returned to Vancouver, they were gone.

[@mwkcheng]

I have seen so many videos about stories of companies that failed, due to bad business decisions and not catching up to the rapid change in technology. But I don't remember seeing anyone mentioned Facit. Another great video backed by amazing research. Thanks!

[@dsludge8217]

Their products were everywhere - and then they weren't...

[@lennyvalentin6485]

This story perfectly illustrates the danger of believing your business model is to sell a specific thing, and then sticking to it until it is too late. Mechanical calculators, in this particular case. We've seen the same with Eastman-Kodak, who despite having a ton of IP for digital camera sensors never managed to capitalize on it, and then they went bankrupt when the photographic film market collapsed. We may see Intel in the same dire straits at one point in the future as they keep holding on to the x86 processor above basically everything else, as the markets increasingly move on towards various ARM architectures, and to some extent, RISC-V.

[@lzh4950]

@@lennyvalentin6485 Actually I remember Kodak didn't want to capitalize on digital camera IP as that would cannibalize its existing market for film & film cameras, but in the end other competitors still went ahead with selling digital cameras & the film market still ended up being cannibalized

[@Slav4o911]

@@lzh4950 Kodak literally sat on patents and didn't use them, just so digital camera never happens... but it still happened. Something like that happened with Nokia, who were one of the first to make a Smartphone, then they didn't realize they should go with Android, they've tried their own mobile system and then tried to go with Windows mobile but they've failed.... the Smartphone revolution happened too fast and it basically destroyed all old mobile phone makers... only Samsung remained but they weren't exclusively "a mobile phone company" also they seem to have been more innovative and not so "entrenched in the old ways of doing things". I think the same might happen to Intel if they don't open their x86 patent, somebody would make a better non x86 chip and suddenly they will fall to the bottom very fast. I think in the long run, someone with more open architecture, maybe Arm or someone else will beat Intel.

[@lzh4950]

@@Slav4o911 Yep I've heard of predictions before of how Intel might face long-term challenges as people use more smartphones instead of computers. As for Nokia I remembered their 1st few smartphones still used "dumb phone" hardware e.g. 3x4 keypads instead of QWERTY keyboards, directional pads & soft keys instead of touchscreens, & they continued to use them even after the iPhone w its touchscreen was launched. The Symbian S60 OS used by Nokia's smartphones was also less user-friendly e.g. you won't be able to find any "Delete file" option in the file manager until you 1st selected the 'Mark' option (to 'mark'/select which files you want to delete. Samsung handphones wasn't popular previously (I didn't like that their UI was inconsistent between different models, unlike Nokia & Sony Ericsson) but they doubled down on touchscreen models soon after iPhone arrived, which I think helped drive their adoption

[@GodmanchesterGoblin]

This was fascinating, thank you. I went through school in the 70s and saw the rapid transition to electronic calculators (my Sinclair Scientific is now 47 years old!). In the 60s and 70s I knew a gentleman who worked for Guys Calculating Machines in London, a company that suffered a similar demise. However, he inspired me with his knowledge and was the reason I became an engineer. I don't have a Facit, but I love my Guys Britannic pin-wheel machine.

[@KaminStalker]

One of the most interesting aspects of this video is this rapid change from expensive specialist machine to small and inexpensive household item. I feel like we still can see the shockwave of this change to this day, with our school system's (central Europe) obsession with calculators.

[@123TeeMee]

Yeah, such a change probably doesn’t happen at all often, only as a result of a huge disruption in technology.

[@hmichaelpower]

Excellent presentation that brought back memories of around 1968 when my class of applied mathematics had a weekly practical exercise in using Facit calculators. Everyone would be given the same formula to calculate, but each student had a unique set of parameters. I had recently learnt Fortran, so would quickly write a programme and nip downstairs to the computer lab to do the class’s calculations. The lecturers eventually caught on when they realised that the entire class would get the right answer, or everyone would be wrong. The next academic year they dropped the Facit tutorials and added computing. It was fascinating to get the big picture of Facit’s demise. So, thank you very much.

[@stever4899]

"They started selling American typewriters..." [stock photo has a Cyrillic keyboard]

[@setlonnert]

I applaud your thorough research into topics that are probably not the easiest to convey, if you don't speak the language! I lived through the last years when Facit was on the decline, when they asked to be rescued, and had some ideas of going into the computer business as you mentioned. The latter is more of the kind of clinging relationship they had with Sharp, although this time with the television/radio manufacturer Luxor AB. Also Swedish. In general some industries in Sweden were on the ropes in the 70’s, such as textile, shipping and also the mechanical based Facit. Often the State had come to the rescue buying shares or nationalising them. This happened to Luxor AB. On the other hand, in 1978 Luxor AB together with DIAB Industrier AB, and Scandia Metric, came out with a small home computer named ABC80. It was comparable to its contemporary “competitors” Commodore PET, Apple II and TRS-80. (There really was no market at this time, as they didn’t have any sales of their own in Sweden, yet.) The ABC80 computer came to dominate the market inside Sweden for some 6-7 years. A successor to ABC80, the ABC800 was born. It also had colour graphics, which the ABC80 did not. It had better BASIC, better keyboard etc. This was something Facit observed. They also wanted to be part of the market, so they took the existing same machine ABC800 and named it Facit DTC, the Facit desktop computer. Also they changed the colour to black. The rest was kept as was. But it was too late. The decline of the internal market gave way to IBM PC and its derivatives. Facit also intruded into the existing market of retail where it distorted closely guarded geographical divides, with dumped prices. No one liked the Facit entry into the market. And eventually they failed to resuscitate. The end.

[@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer]

DIAB even made their own version of Unix, it could run on the ABC-1600 at least. It had a graphical user interface as well.

[@DEtchells]

Fascinating, as always! I think I still have a Sharp ELSI-mate (ELSI-8?) in a box somewhere that I’ve owned since high school. I remember driving with my parents to the next state over to buy it at a steep discount from a place that normally dealt in surplus electronics. Its big advancement was that it had all its circuitry on 4 “LSI” chips. I spent the first couple of days after getting it working out square roots to 8 digits of precision (it was just a simple 4-function machine) - yeah, I was that bad a geek... I remember my mom always doing every calculation with it twice because she couldn’t believe that anything that fast could actually be accurate :-) I also owned one of the first HP-35s, that has the ln(2.02) error. Unfortunately it got stolen a few years later when i was at college :-/

[@rosiefay7283]

What your mum did was useful in that if she had miskeyed, she'd get two different results, which would tell her that. By contrast, if she'd got the same result twice, that would give her confidence that she had not miskeyed. (Though there is the risk that she'd made the same typo twice.)

[@mortenholst1504]

I think a video on Peter Naur and his role in making the ALGOL 60 language would be awesome! He is to this day the only Danish recipient of the Turing award. He played a major role in the construction of Regnecentralen A/S too.

[@surferdude4487]

It wasn't just the computer language, but the very elegant way in wich he defined it, a document called a BNF definition.

[@shinysun2283]

You are pumping out crazy good informative videos out like a manic. Thanks so much.

[@samgeorge4798]

The abacus industry collapse was just as rapid.

[@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330]

Can we have that too?

[@guppy719]

wasn't that a thing in asian countries for a suprising long time?

[@robertewalt7789]

@guppy719 A few years ago, I worked with a young lady who moved here when she was in high school from Ukraine. She said her mother used an abacus at work in the 1970’s.

[@guppy719]

@@robertewalt7789 IDK I have just seen abacus schools in only moderately old manga and anime.

[@forbeginnersandbeyond6089]

Abacus never went away since it is so simple and cheap to produce. It still exists, at least in Asia. For your info, it does additions and subtractions faster than any modern calculator. No need to hit the “=“ key, “enter” key, nor the “+” and”-“ keys.

[@chenr17]

What a great story I'd NEVER heard of before. Such a collapse and failure to follow market trends should be taught in schools everywhere. Great job telling an important lesson

[@davidcarlsson1396]

I have 40 plus of them inherited from my grandfather, they're basically 3kg of pure bras and scrap value is like 5 USD, he saved them from getting incinerated or put in landfills. Makes a great Momentum to engineering and bad leadership. I work in software, and it's a great artifact to explain why modular and decoupled APIs are almost always better than monolithic architecture

[@funny-video-YouTube-channel]

The USSR still did use the mechanical calculators, till China made cheap digital calculators around the 1980s.

[@tomglenn485]

'mechanical calculators' ...the Soviet transation is Abacus.

[@hacc220able]

A lesson for every business. Thanks for sharing.

[@vanlife4256]

You did an awesome job! Thank you for sharing !

[@jangelbrich7056]

Thanks from Sweden. I like the way how You present history in Your pure-facts manner, and the sources You mention.

[@punditgi]

A very nice bit of history. Many thanks for the video! 😃

[@raylopez99]

I wish a video on the mechanical slide rule industry...

[@grizwoldphantasia5005]

That would be fascinating. I still have my Pickett & Eckel (sp?) log-log, and I bet I could still do multiply / divide operations faster than typing, if I only needed a couple of digits of precision.

[@redmond38]

They're still mandatory for student pilots! I learned on a crp-5 and I believe the eb-6 is popular in the US

[@megatesla]

Fantastic video. I have a Facit 1125 made by Sharp in 1968. A beautiful nixie tube machine.

[@lennoxbaumbach390]

What I should be mentioning here is the "Curta", a pocket sized mechanical calculator that looks like a small pepper mill with a crank lever. It was developed by Curt Herzstark, an Austrian engineer and inventor, while he was literally imprisoned in a concentration camp under the Nazi dictatorship bc he had a jewish father. Luckily he and his invention survived and this ingenious little device was still used at the time of the Apollo mission.

[@villageidiot8194]

My favorite mechanical calculator is the Curta Type II mechanical calculator, but Facit calculating machine is interesting. Thanks for the Fascinating history on a Facet of Facit

[@InssiAjaton]

When studying electrical things, I had a roommate who studied land and waterways engineering. We did everything on slide rules. They had mechanical calculators, ether Facit or Brunsviga. After seeing how the calculator handily did produce resolution way beyond my slide rule, I started drooling for one. I got advice that I might find some second hand unit that would be affordable. There were some beautiful Facit machines way beyond my student resources, so all I could lay my hands on, was a quite beaten up Brunsviga. But luckily it worked without any problems. Some time later I was involved in evaluating 3 new desktop engineering calculators, a Litton (Monroe), a Wang and an HP. Both the Litton and the Wang made errors about handling floating point (engineering notation) while the HP did everything right. So my recommendation was for the company R&D department to procure an HP. While we were waiting (and waiting) for the approval, I suddenly got moved to another division, where a new R&D department was to be started. In February HP published articles in their Journal about the new HP-35 pocket calculator. If I recall, its price was $350. It took me a couple of weeks to order one. There was a considerable lead time, so my move to the other city happened before I got my calculator. In fact, I moved in May, and got the calculator in early July. However, a funny thing happened at my previous group. My former immediate boss reported that they had gone to the big boss (who was holding back the company programmable calculator purchase) and told that I was "pissed off" about the delay, and bought my own HP calculator, and left. That worked! They got their programmable one. The HP-35 of course was not programmable. A few years later the HP-67 was, but that is a different story.

[@EyesOfByes]

This story is like the Ericsson vs iPhone prequel. It’s kind of ironic how badly Facit could f*ck this up considering the technological knowledge in the industry. It must be the fact that it kind of made only one ancient machine, and couldn’t change

[@JMac-fj1rg]

In 1972 HP introduced the HP-35, the first 'scientific' electronic calculator. One year later , the largest manufacturer of scientific slide rules , K&E , announced that they would cease manufacturing slide rules

[@magloc]

I learned how to use it in 1978 in a land survey training school in conjunction with electronic calculator. The reason behind was if we were carrying out survey duty in remote area, this machine does not require batteries and more reliable than the electronic calculator. We used to comptete how many turns one can crank the handle in 10 seconds.

[@leyasep5919]

Yet another awesome report... and reminder !

[@Kelimion]

On the topic of mechanical calculators, I've always found the Curta to be a marvel. Thanks as always for a great video.

[@haramanggapuja]

I have a Facit TK sitting here on the desk next to me. And an Ohdner too. Both are marvelous machines. Heavy beasts but nicely made. You have to work to get any high math functions out of them but at least the Ohdner does square roots a bit more easily and quickly than the Facit. Thanks for the video. Great presentation.

[@oldcougar65]

In 1966 while in college, I had a summer job working in an electrical supply house Their salesmen priced the goods by offerring multiple discounts: 20%/30%/10% off the retail price, that kind of thing, but it could a different discount for every item. Invoices could have dozens of items, all with individual multiple discounts. They bought an electronic calculator that I used to calculate invoices. It had a CRT with 4 lines of output, several of which were memory lines. It was an amazing machine. You showed a version by Friden, but mine was labeled Singer (Friden was a division of Singer). I joined IBM the day they unbundled and have been in IT ever since. But in retrospect I'm still impressed with what I was using in 1966.

[@Jonno-pv1nr]

I worked as a junior clerk in a bank in 1974-5 in the foreign exchange department, cashing and issuing travellers' checks and bank drafts. I used a new digital electronic calculator to do all the currency conversions, and my work was randomly checked by my senior office supervisor, who did it on her mechanical "coffee grinder" Facit, just as quickly as me on my electronic calculator!

[@adon8672]

Nice video as usual. It would have been great if the dollar amounts were also converted to today's equivalents. That'd give a better idea of the scale/value involved.

[@grizwoldphantasia5005]

You can get a reasonable estimate for US dollars by multiplying 1960 prices by 10; just add a zero. It's in the ballpark for, say, 1955-1965. US Inflation didn't take off until the late 1960s / early 1970s.

[@TTbelis]

Thank you for this this technological and business case study lesson.

[@Nobe_Oddy]

excellent video... i learned so much about a company i never heard of... which is awesome LD

[@aurigo_tech]

I have a (west)german produced Facit NTK. And also an east german copy with a simplified exterior, but otherwise the same mechanism - a Madix HM. Truly wonderful machines.

[@randydewees7338]

My parents dug deep and bought me a Bowmar Brain calculator in 1972 (I think), I used that many years before getting a Texas Instruments SR52. I bought my first HP RPN programmable in 1986, a HP 41CV. I still use a couple old 15C units - go RPN!.

[@mattbland2380]

Great video once again. Amazing to chart the decline of the old mechanical calculators and their huge cost versus the emergence of silicon powered calculators. We take such devices and capabilities for granted. What else that now takes expensive equipment will be cheap and ubiquitous tomorrow? As a young school boy I purchased a red LED calculator for a few pounds. It was bulky and ate batteries. A year or two later there were wafer thin solar powered LCD calculators being sold in petrol stations for even less. About the same time i got my first micro computer that connected to a TV and could produce 3D surface plots with high resolution graphics using trigonometric functions on basic. Not bad for the early 1980’s.

[@robbybobbyhobbies]

An interesting story from far north-west Asia. Gradually watching all of your output - good stuff.

[@richdobbs6595]

I learned to use an HP-35 calculator with its RPN when I was in high school, circa 1974-1976. In engineering school, I had an HP-21. I didn't realize that I was using cutting edge technology, but it put in in good shape to use the HP-41C when I started working at Conoco in 1980.

[@agranero6]

I have a Facit (no model number in the labels, the first one ion the picture with multiple models you show). It only adds and subtracts and multiplication and division is made by successive addition and subtractions along with shifting the digits. It is very good to do operations like that. Took me years waiting in an auction site to find one in god state.

[@JohnnieHougaardNielsen]

Back in the 70's, I learned to type on Facit manual typewriters, as such they were pretty good, but at the end of the mechanical office machine era. I did see a few mechanical calculators too, "dusty old things", and I got my first electronic pocket calculator, pretty basic functions and affordable.

[@joshuahernandez3216]

Man, you sure pick some interesting subjects. Nice.

[@LatitudeSky]

Reminds me of what happened at Kodak, one of those dumpster fire companies of New York. They had been doing film cameras for so long and making so much money, even when they saw digital cameras coming and even sold them, they failed to understand what was happening until it was too late. Kodak still exists but nothing like they used to be.

[@JohnnieHougaardNielsen]

Kodak was even pioneering development of digital cameras, Steven Sasson built and patented a prototype in 1975, but management decided that they could make much more money being a chemical company.

[@fischX]

The lesson there is that nothing lasts - stuff like that is not a management error, if you have 10000 people in a mechanical or chemical company and that's your main experience you may see that the next big thing is plant based calculators or what ever but at this point you basically have to build the company from scratch to make the technology change. In this situation it's probably better to search for a different field with similar production requirements than your previous products in case of the mechanical calculator probably car parts or what ever, but such a switch is risky, and there are others in the market so getting the money for such an investment is rare, btw Commodore ended up in the home computer market because of desk calculator market went tits up, but they could not read the signs in the 90's when Home Computer where done. Next lesson, be on the top is a dangerous place because you are the last one who sees the wave.

[@davidcarlsson1396]

Yeah but in this example they hired compent devs and didn't listen to them, ending with them leaving and the company loosing any chance of actually buying into the new era.

[@JohnnieHougaardNielsen]

@@fischX That would be fair if Kodak actually worked on related business cases for using their expertise in chemical production. As they simply continued their existing business, and seemingly just hoped that the danger of electronic cameras would not be developed to relegate film to small niches, I'd still call it a management error to not have a plan B. Of course, lots of other companies have made similar errors, but it is not too unusual to see companies have significant succes getting in early on new technology, even if not within their existing expertise. Like when Nokia got huge in the mobile phone business, having started with paper mills and rubber - and still failed to lead or even grasp a generational shift in mobile phones, hitching their wagon to another company (Microsoft) failing to maintain their success in phones to be competitive with the new generation running Android and iPhone.

[@fischX]

@@JohnnieHougaardNielsen Well they did not sell it because they knew that it would thank the Foil and Photochemical part of their company - they where aware that someone will come at some point but they thought they could risk to slow down the process. It would be of course the better business decision to develop the best possible digital camera and take the whole marked with a mass product that is reasonable priced from a long term perspective. But even if you know exactly how the future turns out that would be a hard sell to the stakeholders - investors don't want to risk anything in a low risk investment that Kodak was, employees don't want to be laid off. I guess even if we send you from the future back into the boardroom of Kodak with proof how it turns out it would not change much. We see that right now in the car market, many suppliers like Bosch Automotive are on the way to a cliff even they where actually pioneering some technology for electric cars. But they are just big into gasoline technology to make a easy turn. And they are completely aware of this. They where thinking of Kodak and choosing a slightly different direction but still thats not a situation you want to be in as management where you basically have to sink the boat to save the vessel.

[@MikCph]

I still remember my first office job at the local library, where we used Facit typewriters, non-electric, but with keys balanced so well that it was close to writing on an electric type-writer. You could type twice as fast as on other non-electric typewriters.

[@muraleedharanpaloran1712]

Nicely presented. Lessons to be learned by all business.

[@dfor50]

I used to use a facit machine in Sydney, Australia. The one I used was made in Italy. Great little machine.

[@DavidARowland]

I have a Facit portable typewriter I bought in 1962. It is a relic but beautifully made, and it still works well.

[@goneutt]

I remember the Cisco Flip cameras. A growing brand, talk of an IPO spin off. Then it was like somebody in the org saw a phone with a decent camera and they axed the whole brand. Sometimes it’s best to just exit the market, if possible.

[@ianstobie]

Flip was great, a really easy-to-use pocket video camera. You had to be careful with wind noise outdoors, but it was a good way of generating video just as vast numbers of people wanted to do that. Cisco killed it in 2011 having only acquired the company making it two years earlier. I think the problem was Cisco, rather than simply smartphones killing the niche. Cisco wasn't used to mass-market consumer products with a rapid innovation cycle, so it was wise to get out for that reason. Other players making small video cameras have found other ways to compete with smartphones, notably Go Pro with tough action cameras and DJI with their stabilized Osmo Pocket range.

[@ilshyf]

It's really interesting in the science history perspective, because going mechanical was much more common idea to make a new device until 20th century when the electronics started to replace the mechanical. When you see how Pascal, Leibniz and Babbage devised an automatic calculator, all of them were mechanical.

[@Errr717]

I went to college in the late 60's and slide rule was the king for engineering majors. After my junior year I ended joining the Navy and when I went back in 1973 the HP 35 had just been replaced by a newer model, the HP 45 which I still have today.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

A couple years ago I was able to score a very good condition HP 35 for only $50. Beautiful machine, and easy to power with a modern lithium polymer cell.

[@harryragland7840]

We used to have a Comptometer mechanical calculator that had the rank and file digits like some of the early electronic calculators. The number keys were attached to rack gears which drove a pinion; 9 having a long throw down to 1 which had a short throw. The unit could only add, but you could subtract using 10's compliment. You could multiply by repeated adding and shifting your hands down the keyboard. During my Mother's PHD work, it became necessary to replace the Comptometer with an electronic calculator, a TI SR10 for $300. The SR10 could add, subtract, multiply, divide and take square roots. It differed from other calculators of the day in that it had scientific notation so it was rare to overflow. A few years back I saw a Comptometer as a display piece in a technology themed bar. These days I don't use a calculator relying on spreadsheets instead. I do still have a few slide rules for nostalgia's sake.

[@steveunderwood3683]

It's amazing how long the broken shells of once successful companies take to be fully liquidated.

[@mbee32k]

Very good and balanced presentation.

[@oldsynner]

I can remember using a mechanical calculator in a college (UK so-pre uni) course. It relied on you listening for a bell, which was fine, until you were in a room with 40 other people bashing away at these things. When electronic calculators appeared I ran to the shop even though it cost the proverbial "arm and a leg".

[@paulcohen1555]

I worked with mini computers in the 70's and I remember FACIT had very nice Paper Tape Punch PTP machines.

[@dewiz9596]

In 1976, I started working for a typesetting company that used four IBM Sele tricks I/O typewriters connected to DEC PDP-8 minicomputer. Output from the system was paper tape, punched on a Facit Papertape Punch machine. Paper tape would be fed into one of two Singer Phototypesetters. The Facit punch was ABSOLUTE CRAP . . . the spacing between the punches would vary to the extent that the tape readers on the phototypesetters could not handle it. I’m glad those days are far behind me.

[@henrikjohnsson3407]

A well researched account of the fate of Facit. Usually it's the same gloating chuckles about incompetent management who couldn't see the signs where things were heading. But to fully understand all the intricacies of the failure you probably need to have an idea of the political climate in Sweden at the time, the "gentlemens agreement" between the three major players, government, powerful unions and private enterprise which was an integral part of the Swedish society. I'd say management were aware of what was happening, but there were many obstacles in both the structure of the company and the society that made it hard to change direction quick enough to keep up with the competition form Japan. A recurring theme in the western world during the 60's and 70's, Japan annihilated a lot of our industries during that era. Another thing that is often overlooked is the sense of responsibility that I assume Gunnar Ericsson felt for his home town, so much in Åtvidaberg was dependent on Facit. It genuinely was a family business with loyal, proud and very skilled employees, but unfortunately skilled in a soon to be obsolete field. Hiring the right people for electronics design and manufacturing, if they could at all be found, would mean laying off entire families that had been with the company for decades and that he had known since childhood. Unfortunately, there's little place for sentimentality in business. My first job was with one of the companies that picked up some of the pieces from Facit, and throughout my career I've visited a few of the plants that Facit operated. It's a fascinating piece of industrial history, I frequently visit Åtvidaberg and I've meet some really interesting people who were around when Facit flourished. And the mechanical calculators? Not entirely relics actually, I sometimes come across places where they are in daily use. Not in offices, but in places like lumber yards.

[@hitmusicworldwide]

The vintage National Book store shot from the Philippines was an eye opener. Perhaps they should have emphasized the lack of a paper trail with the electronic calculators at the time?

[@alamagordoingordo3047]

Great research, a true tale.

[@dhelton40]

My uncle worked for Monroe Calculator in Bristol Virginia. They produced fine mechanical calculators. When the first eletronic calculators came on the market, they couldn't close down fast enough...like they were never there at all.

[@bikepacker9850]

You are a genius to make something so mundane son interesting. Thank you.

[@christianchristiansen99]

Facit-nating topic. Great video. For future reference, google translate (and others) will often offer a reasonably accurate pronunciation of words in other languages.

[@ingvarhallstrom2306]

The name "Åtvidaberg" could jokingly be direct translated into English as "Ate wide mountains".

[@lifeisgameplayit]

you know how add more value to the words I wish we could have more time to really think what me say

[@mumiemonstret]

I love the illustration at 9:49 showing how Facit made their first tube computer, "This was at a time before...", *transition to IBM's Blue Gene from 1999!* Haha, yeah they sure were a bit behind...

[@flyingfox8072]

Back in 1972, I used this Facit calculator while working as a clerk in India. During the following several decades, it was available in the scrap yard (Mumbai chor bazaar). Wish I had one of it now😁😁

[@RM-el3gw]

great video as always... You cover some of the most random things lol

[@jsundb02]

The first letter in Åtvidaberg is pronounced like an O in opportunity.

[@EyesOfByes]

Yes, *Åtvidaberg* was pronounced totally wrong. But your pronounciation made it sound really really cool. Or like a medication.

[@umbrellacorporationwuhanfa3731]

Electrolux the vaccums!? My mom had one in the 80s! Those things where cool af! I used to ride on it and pretend it was a rocket 🚀 ship.

[@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer]

They still exist. They're a fairly large company, but I think they only use the actual brand Electrolux in Sweden at this point. There's a long list of brands on their Wikipedia article, you might find some that are common in your country.

[@dsludge8217]

My parents got an Electrolux Z70 vacuum when they got married in 1957. I still use it.

[@umbrellacorporationwuhanfa3731]

@@dsludge8217 My moms was from the 70s she had it until the mid 90s then got another brand which she regretted. The problem is as you inevitably get older the vacuums become cumbersome which is what my mother experienced w/age. Great vaccum,fond memories!

[@mellertid]

My mum studied when I was a child, I remember how her then new TI-30 calculator would sometimes take a noticably long time to arrive at an answer, like a second or so. Oddly, I don't remember my engineer dad having any calculators before the lcd era.

[@valopf7866]

Once again interesting video! Sweden's economy punches way above its weight class.

[@rickalexander2801]

Surprised you didn't mention Friden calculators. Carl Friden emigrated from Sweden to the US and eventually started his own calculator company in the 1930's. A very insightful mechanical engineer he would have loved to see how his company prospered. He died young (age 54) in 1945.

[@ricardokowalski1579]

This is very similar to what happened to Olivetti. Good content.

[@feraudyh]

One of the smartest channels on the Web.

[@lenroddis5933]

I used one of these calculators in 1965 for an A level Maths with Computations course. Try working a theoretical maths question in an exam room where your classmate is cranking away on one of these.

[@romanchomenko2912]

I used to inspect Facit components and using plastic injection moulding for spacers and with tight tolerances was a pain to control. An injection moulding die could have 16 components and 12 could be scrapped, the spiral wheels that counted crisp notes was also a pain tight tolerances because you have to have a machine operator drilling and milling the tops that slot into the currency machines. This was in the 1990s it brings back a boring 100 percent inspection which didn't guarantee 100 percent quality checks because the cpk was below 1 so scrappage was high nightmare.

[@jensschroder8214]

My family owned a mechanical calculator. The thing was very heavy. Calculating plus, minus, times and divided was possible. By shifting also +10 and -10 or other decimal places. But it was only a curiosity because small pocket calculators are used. At some point the scrap metal dealer came by.

[@someguybreaks]

Ok, now divide by zero and watch it go bonkers.

[@mikaelkjericsson]

My old maths teacher tried that as a girl. 😄 She told us that the calculator entered some equivalence of an endless loop and had to be opened and physically resetted.

[@grizwoldphantasia5005]

I did that too once, a mechanical calculator with a big old hand crank, and only remember ir running forever until I turned it off and back on.

[@sau002]

Very nicely done. I am reminded of the book by Intel co-founder Andy Gove , titled "Only the paranoid survive". The essence of teh book is - if you are not paranoid about failure then you are doomed eventually.

[@freeculture]

I think i have one of those things, the ones shown in the beginning in black with a lever and rows of numbers and some buttons and levers. Though I'm not exactly sure how to operate it, it seems to work fine, you can turn the lever and select things like 1 and it adds it to the top. PS: Darn thing is heavy as a brick, was being used to keep a door open lol...

[@marcclarence2260]

Slightly off topic but if you ever go back to your series on companies in the semiconductor industry could you make a video on Lam Research?

[@srinivasvaranasi1645]

An interesting tale of how fast technology has started moving in these times

[@hoilst265]

"The Rapid Collapse of the Swedish Mechanical Calculator Industry" - this had better be a chapter title in a Wes Anderson film.

[@jansenart0]

Really impressive breakdown about an epoch that changed the world, in addition to destroying the mechanical calculator.

[@MntMan1662]

In 1978 I was taking a chemistry class and the professor was talking about when he did his graduate work he had a mechanical calculator (early 60s). However the mechanical calculator developed a problem and he asked around who could fix it. He was told a guy had just opened a shop in his garage. He took it by left it for a week and the guy fixed it. You said that's great I'll write you a check who do I make it out to. The guy pointed up to a sign he said I just had this made you can make it out to Texas instruments. It was doing his doctorate work at the University of Texas by the way. However Texas instruments apparently started with mechanical and moved on to a great deal of semiconductor calculators.

[@GaryGrumble]

In the US Marchant calculators were popular in the 50's and 60's before computers took over.

[@accessiblenow]

Mostek, a spin off of TI, developed a one chip 4 function calculator for Bisicom in Japan. When they called Electronic News to announce it, they were told that TI had just called to announce their introduction of a 2 chip set doing the same thing.

[@googiegress7459]

I have an electronic Sharp pocket calculator with a battery and tiny solar cell that I used in elementary school in the early 1990s, and have continued to use it (mostly at the D&D table). My name on the back has faded almost completely but it still works just fine. My understanding is that the battery isn't supposed to last that long so I guess it's just a manufacturing fluke. My family was not well off so this would have been the cheapest calculator available.

[@jonasglanshed]

FACIT also made some of the best paper tape punches/readers in the business, the 4000 series are some of the best ever made, and highly sought after by vintage computer collectors

[@hydorah]

Axel Wibble? What an amazing name. Worthy of being in a Blackadder episode!