The Friden STW-10 Calculator Plays The Friden March

I had the Friden calculator out for a photoshoot, so I took advantage of it to have it do the Friden March, and also 0 divided by 0 while I was at it.
Friden Calculator Playlist: • Friden STW 10 Mechanic...
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[@jeshkam]

"By pressing down a special key it plays a little melody" :-)

[@TSAlpha2933]

Ich bin der musikant mit taschenrechner in der hand.

[@Echin0idea]

How big are your pockets?!

[@fredriko.zachrisson9711]

😉

[@RevolutionibusOrbiumCoelestium]

got the reference 😁👍

[@jeshkam]

@@Echin0idea Big enough.

[@greendryerlint]

After a long day of working in a room full of these, you'd go to the casino for some peace and quiet. What an amazingly clever mechanism.

[@gorillaau]

Straight for a one-arm bandit?

[@gmcoelho]

Calculator: "I shall play you the song of my people..."

[@FesixGermany]

The engineering and complexity of these mechanical machines back in the days without 3D CAD... wow

[@darkcoeficient]

This is why I feel we are declining. Now we have CAD. What do we do?

[@briansmith8967]

@@darkcoeficient Other amazing engineering feats. Oh, you were being sarcastic?

[@darkcoeficient]

@@briansmith8967 not really. What I mean is: have we achieved something more complex than this for everyday use with technologies like CAD? My answer is no. Granted, we have electronic calculators now. But we don't design things as intricate as this for mass production.

[@pyramidschema8668]

@@darkcoeficient A modern CPU has over a billion transistors and you can buy one for less than 100 bucks. It just doesn't look as complex because the things doing the work are electrons we can't see instead of gears and shafts. If you mean mechanical complexity, modern CAD does structural and fluid dynamic analysis which allows us to, for example, build cars which deform at speed to change their aerodynamic profile to better suit the driving conditions. More impressive than a gearbox which adds and subtracts IMO.

[@darkcoeficient]

@@pyramidschema8668 you missed the whole point.

[@RevolutionibusOrbiumCoelestium]

I want to go back in time when the Friden machine was being developed, EXACTLY at the time they discovered they needed that “DIV STOP” button. 😉

[@TheEmeraldMenOfficial]

Friden engineers were probably Fridened of what they had created. Sorry, bad pun.

[@Cypeq]

well they didn't build one on accident, they understood quite well what it will do when division by zero happens. Perhaps the problem with this mechanical design is that it's a dumb box and does not interpret in anyway what you type. Hence it can't recognize invalid operation and just halt like computer does.

[@thearousedeunuch]

I would assume that they were very likely testing dividing something by zero to see if the machine worked, and went "Oh... oh, no.".

[@robertobryk4989]

I'm somewhat surprised that this was simpler than having an electric or mechanical "all-zero detector" that would prevent the DIV button from being pressed or would not power the motor if it was.

[@FyreWulff]

i think that's technically part of the halting problem so it needs an outside input to stop it.@@robertobryk4989

[@MikeBramm]

It must have been deafening to work in a room full of mechanical calculators like that.

[@Dust599]

Oh it was... mechanical typewriters where also bad really bad...

[@CuriousMarc]

And IBM keypunch machines were even worse...

[@SuperAWaC]

i am only just barely old enough to have seen a couple of the last holdouts for these types of machines, it's a very unique sound that probably doesn't exist in the world anymore, and may never again.

[@sashimanu]

Even a single teletype is quite loud, can't imagine how it sounded in a comms centre

[@compu85]

I wonder if the din of all the mechanical office equipment evened out into a kind of white noise?

[@mx0r]

These mechanical beauties remind me of the fact, that I remember, from my early childhood, mechanical calculators being actually used in shops until early 90s in Czechoslovakia.

[@jackkraken3888]

This is probably the only time in history where an overdraft would be considered cool.

[@RaymondHng]

Bank: You cannot write any more checks. Your account is in overdraft. Customer: But I still have checks!

[@explorer914]

Now I understand where the term crunching numbers comes from. 😊

[@paulcohen1555]

For me, 60 years ago these machines were magic. Now I think they were more difficult to build than modern integrated circuits.

[@aserta]

They're not? It's essentially the same mechanism repeated per digit, then integrated with an oversight and input system. Input > repeated mechanism > output + reset + visualization. Once you split the machine in basic blocks, it's actually very easy to fix and deal with. IF you don't do that brain distinction, then yeah, looks freaking terror, but, really, once you get the blocks, you see them for what they are and it's like a walk in the park. Will admit, it's the park at night and sometimes Freddy is hiding behind some of the bushes. But you're Rambo, so it's ok, you can always brute force it. :))

[@Cypeq]

well sorry to say but that is completely utterly false. We can perhaps produce them fast, and they aren't expensive to buy but they are not easy to make. Considering the fact, machines making those chips, take months to build and months to calibrate. They result of R&D efforts of tens of thousands of brilliant people. They've been extremely difficult to make for decades. Every process improvement takes years of research, That's why there's so few companies in this business, when it comes to bleeding edge of IC manufacturing. TSMC, Samsung and Intel. Sure there are more overall but they are couple steps behind, which means almost a decade. It's fine though not every application needs fastest ICs. There is more companies building space rockets than ones fabricating best performing ICs.

[@hrishikeshkashyap3715]

@@Cypeq I agree with you.

[@TheVexCortex]

@@godografnaykvista kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4SYqpajbLuZjsk It's not me in the video, but it is possible, do I get the payout?

[@AlexMoreno-zj7po]

Integrated circuits may be the most complicated things humans design or build

[@gregkrekelberg4632]

Oh man. I have one of these from my grandmother, and I am really tempted to try the restoration. After seeing all the ball bearings from the carriage fall everywhere, I'm pretty intimidated.

[@MrCarGuy]

You _must_ take pictures of each part you disassemble and organize each part into well-marked containers/bags for each subsystem. If you document it and organize you won't have many issues. Otherwise it's intimidating.

[@CuriousMarc]

@Greg Krekelberg: You bet. I bought an extra bag of replacement ball bearings!

[@aserta]

I've been putting off taking an expensive lens that nobody would touch, that i got for very cheap off ebay. There's balls all over the damn thing, and they're smaller than one mm. To quote something else, sometimes, you just have to take your balls out of your purse, and do it. Nearly finished with it, won't lie, it was horror, but i did it, got over my scare, and it's a success. Wish you well/same on your calculator, it's worth it.

[@av8bvma513]

@@CuriousMarc Surely sir, you meant to say Bearing Balls.

[@michaelturner4457]

I'm the operator of my Friden calculator. By pressing down a special key it plays a little melody

[@TechnoBaseFreaq]

Michael Turner Kraftwerk? Only know the German lyrics to Taschenrechner (Calculator).

[@Eo_Tunun]

Brilliant thought, Sire! ^^) kzbin.info/www/bejne/sIvXZ2eVjbSZos0

[@michaelturner4457]

@@TechnoBaseFreaq Yeh, Kraftwerk. Pocket Calculator from Computer World (Computerwelt)

[@michaelturner4457]

I am adding And subtracting I'm controlling And dividing by zero.

[@jeffhyche9839]

Look at that monster. All mechanical, its both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Beautiful in watching it work with the cover off, terrifying to think of having to fix it if it breaks.

[@danw1955]

OMG! I had one of these back in the late 70's that I picked up for a dollar at a local auction barn, and I never could find any documentation for it. Made some interesting noises though.😁

[@I967]

Thanks to watching your channel, I have recently become a very happy owner of a vintage HP 6114A Precision Power Supply. It was originally used by The Research Institute of Mathematical Machines in Prague. I am in the Czech Republic and classic HP devices are rare and expensive in Europe, but seeing the prices the 6114A in working condition sells for, I got a turbo bargain. Thank you again, Marc!

[@acmefixer1]

I have several HP 6114 power supplies and I've had to repair them. The electrolytic capacitors dry up and need to be replaced or a good capacitor added to them. But the cheap plastic case of the 611x power supplies will shatter into many small pieces if you try to open them up. The front and back rings break very easily, and the case itself easily breaks, too. If the rings break but the case is intact, you can use tape to hold it together. The pots get noisy and difficult to set at a given value. It's nearly impossible to find replacements. The neon light on the front can be replaced by a LED, diode and resistor. Or else use a LED and resistor on the output. If there are any other bad parts, the schematic is available. But the parts can be unique to HP. Some are very specialized, like the potted circuits. Others can be replaced with a standard part, but it may have to be specially selected for proper performance. Nowadays you can buy a new analog power supply made in Asia for fifty dollars US plus shipping. And it can handle more current than the old HPs.

[@MCPicoli]

Fine example of errors caused by underclocking.

[@TheJunky228]

time for an overclock! how many rpm can it be spun before it starts throwing errors? xD

[@MCPicoli]

@@TheJunky228 Seems like a task for a steampunk, alternate-universe PhotonicInduction video.

[@taha6939]

This is basically a mechanical cpu which takes crank rotations as clock cycles. Really cool.

[@apolloandwarrior_3229]

The complexity of this machine makes me wonder how the heck someone invented let alone build one

[@phonotical]

sounds cavernous! imagine a room of those, the noise would be maddening!

[@typograf62]

I would never have guessed that number crunching could be so melodic.

[@cyrilmauras4247]

My first job was with Singer Business Machines, a subsidiary of the European Friden company, in the early 1970s. I remember these mechanical calculators and the older employees who repaired them. I worked on the Friden electronic calculators that were replacing these mechanical wonders. Later, in the late 1980s, these calculators were considered obsolete, and the older employees who couldn't adjust to repairing the electronic machines, were fired.

[@Digital-Dan]

We can put it in my percussion section at our next 4th of July Parade!

[@douro20]

On my Monroe automatic calculator you actually have to hold the divide stop key down until it stops. Machines which have carry gearing in the quotient register (i.e. Mercedes-Euklid) can use an even more efficient method of division, by subtracting until underflow, then shifting right and adding until it rolls back over.

[@holyravioli5795]

Quite literally a work of art.

[@jamesspash5561]

oh my god, My uncle used to work on these back in the 60s. I had an old one as a kid. Who ever figured out build this machine was insane!!

[@robertwhite3965]

this little machine is a mechanical marvel.

[@aljawad]

This is so satisfying to look at - and hear!

[@krnlg]

I'm not sure what's wrong with me: watching beautiful complex mechanisms in action makes me come over all emotional. Its the same with steam engines for that matter. What is it about machines like this? I think the fact it is physical makes it easier to intuitively - and in some deeper way - appreciate just how complex and subtle it really is, and how much time has gone into the design and creation of it. Your channel is one of the more wonderful parts of the internet! Cheers.

[@karolakkolo123]

I feel the same way. I kind of wish I lived during those times to experience all the cool ideas people had with mechanical machines

[@sanityd1]

Much respect to you and Robert Baruch for your electromechanical repairs. If you wanted to put up some videos of just you rambling about stuff I would certainly be interested, but you do you.

[@davidgrisez]

This old mechanical calculator has an interesting feature. If the electric power goes out, a person can insert the hand crank and run the calculator manually with the hand crank.

[@AndrewDeme]

Thanks heaps....has been a while since I experienced this first hand

[@_hackwell]

that is just amazing !

[@Bianchi77]

Nice video clip, keep it up, thank you for sharing it :)

[@CBlargh]

This is so wild! My gran _absolutely_ worked on these things, and I never heard a word about it! It's like some strange, lost piece of history. I seriously didn't know there was a way to automate calculations without silicon.

[@duncanmurphy8085]

I was just watching your last video!

[@GrumpyTim]

Such an object of desire, love the Friden STW-10 maybe one day I'll find one to add to my collection. Great video Marc :-)

[@simontay4851]

You need to find enough money first. I suspect working ones in good condition sell for A LOT of money.

[@scowell]

Thanks for this! I had remembered Grandpa's Frieden playing this cadence in the mid-60's... I seem to remember there were two of them. I did manage to get it into an infinite loop... I believe he unplugged it to reset it.

[@Ruddy761]

OMG I had one of thees. I was mesmerized by it when I was a young lad.. So Cool

[@danielm7089]

I have one of these in the garage. Ill have to try this.

[@someonespadre]

I have a hand crank Monroe Model K, you earn your answer. It’s accurate, I’ve checked it. I also have a smaller model LA5 which has a motor, hope to get it working. I think I know what it needs. I paid $8 for the Model K in a thrift store and $10 for the LA5. Ironically the simpler pinwheel calculators bring more dollars. I think the 50s/60s fully automatic models can be had cheap because they almost always don’t work and they are very complex…these guys that fix them are amazing to me.

[@gort59]

I really love these old mechanical machines! Great job!

[@hadzukyon1671]

4:06 reminds me to the Chile military march music that is used in schools anniversary

[@beatadalhagen]

Would be awesome to get some high-speed video of all these parts with the cover off.

[@oblitum]

Great video, I like

[@umaikeruna]

I really want to go back in time and show this to the creator of the Antikythera mechanism.

[@kc5402]

The mechanics in these things were so complicated you needed a calculator to work out the design. Oh hang on a minute....... ;-)

[@phonotical]

it looks a little yellow, is that just the lighting or the paint fading?

[@BrightBlueJim]

LOL! They even had to add a "DIV STOP" key!

[@Stephen_Heathcote]

Excellent :)

[@andrewsnow7386]

I just tried the march on my Monroe No. 1 "High Speed Adding Calculator" and on my Marchant "Silent Speed" machines. Neither sound nearly as good as the Friden. Not surprisingly, the Silent Speed machine does a particularly poor job with the march. Some day my dad might let me have his STW-10. Then I can enjoy the Friden March properly.

[@wobbers99]

really?

[@russellhltn1396]

Question: why does the carriage stop at the 1B mark instead of advancing to the 10B, subtracting, encountering an overflow, and then backing up to start the divide? It seems like that part of the cycle is to try and find the "edge" of the number, but I'm not understanding how it does that. Or is that a position a "hard coded " limit?

[@userPrehistoricman]

If you go frame by frame at 5:47, you can see it tries the same operation on every digit up to the 1B mark. Then, it decides not to move over the carriage at that point. Curiously, it does the same operation twice (going from 5/0 -> 4/1).

[@russellhltn1396]

@@userPrehistoricman Right. It seem to be subtracting once looking for a underflow condition. Failing to trigger one, it adds the number back and then moves to the left. When it reaches the 1B mark, it does the same, but does not advance. After adding the number back, it starts the divide sequence. At this point I think it's simple the limit of how far the carriage will go. I notice a red mark and white mark lining up, which may be some kind of limit indicator. It does suggest the calculator could "lock up" if there's a 10B number being divided by a single digit divisor, since it's going to take more than a short run of nine subtractions before the underflow hits.

[@mattstvbarn]

Interesting. I've just been experimenting with divide routines for Intel's 1976' MCS-48 (which has no hardware divide). Funnily enough my crappy first attempt gets stuck in an infinite loop on /0. It works the same way as this calculator.

[@lwilton]

Now you just need to collect one of the big Monroe calculators. :-)

[@bryanluhning6346]

I got to "play" with one of these in the sixties, it was majical.

[@dwightl5863]

I used one in an accounting class in high school in 1965-66.

[@FayezButts]

It almost looks like you could program your own march!

[@Diego-zz1df]

Someone made one play part of the Radetzky March kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXKafWaoj8eohLs kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6KYi5p4Yqegpc0

[@electrofan7180]

Pure mechanical magic☻

[@emdxemdx]

When I started my calculator collection, a Friden STW-10 was the first one I got… :)

[@Hankathan]

I was wondering what would happen if you input 999999999 as the dividend. Would it think it overflowed? Could you divide it by 0?

[@SGManiac1255]

one of these days i'm going to splurge and get me a mechanical calculator or 7.... idk why, but i absolutely love watching these machines do their thing.

[@koyaanisqatsi316]

Man, without the covers this thing really shouts Steampunk 😎

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

@CuriousMarc >>> 👍👍

[@jlwilliams]

So. Many. Parts. Can't help wondering what it would cost to manufacture one of these today. $1 million? $10 million?

[@eekmeout]

well the thing with manufacturing is that the cost of the initial prototype keeps being divided down by the production units you're selling. so yes, today when no one but a few old farts would buy them, they would be terribly expensive to produce.

[@gamebriz4163]

Impressive engineering considering its all mechanical.

[@edgeeffect]

Sounds like our central heating system....... Try some different patterns of 5s and 1s..... Friden Rhumba...... Friden Bossanova????

[@BurtSampson]

nice

[@amremotewatching]

I'm sure my Tinnitus is from being in a room full of these .. and loads of IBM Selectric / golf ball typewriters thumping away !

[@miladirani4313]

Please work on lagomarcino totalia , that is great machine too

[@FischiPiSti]

The rhytmn reminds of Grinder from Red Alert 2. Curious how many get this without listening to it

[@FixDaily]

Why it has so many row numbers?

[@gavincurtis]

Not sneaking that into the test.

[@eumoria]

I'm curious about why hand cranking and not working at speed it comes up with division errors... intuition would be that it would be correct at any speed, no? I realize it's a super complicated mechanism but that just seems odd to me :(

[@Starwarsfan2099]

These machines often have catches, cams, and clutches that may need to be spinning at a certain speed to extend and catch when needed.

[@eumoria]

@@Starwarsfan2099 oh yea that makes sense after a while a clicking cam on a gear will just start floating and not 'tick' anymore still why slower operation will cause that as well but again, wayyyy complex lol

[@CuriousMarc]

Some of that may become clearer in the next episode. When it fails to carry on digit 13 and 14, it's the two spring carries that did not get unlatched, because I completely stopped turning the crank just at the wrong moment. You need a little bit of carry lever velocity for it to work.

[@eumoria]

@@CuriousMarc oh wow thank you for the reply. can't wait for the video :D

[@ricardlupus]

@@CuriousMarc What is the point of the machine being able to be hand cranked at all? Is it in case someone needs to do calculations when the power is out, or is it intended for use while servicing?

[@adamharbach309]

I know a place that has one and I want to see if they’ll sell it to me. I’d have to restore it, though, because I’ve tried pushing buttons and they’re stuck. I also didn’t have a power cord, but I feel like the buttons should have at least pressed.

[@dwightl5863]

If the machine is in any part of the cycle, the keys are locked out. There are mechanics under each key row that would need to be free from any interruption on an pressed keys to perform calculations.

[@rupe53]

For our next trick we will convert "Jingle Bells on a touch tone phone" over to that of a rotary dial phone, then speed it up and have the Chipmunks sing along!

[@525Lines]

I worked in a community where all the girls in our high school went to typist pools like this in 2:45 and all the guys went to the mill.

[@rkan2]

no 90$/week for you anymore :P

[@525Lines]

@@rkan2 Those high school guys would graduate one day and the next day have new cars because that's what a mill job got you back then, even before your first paycheck. You had a house within a year.

[@rkan2]

@@525Lines Welcome to the world after the Bretton Woods agreement.

[@mfbfreak]

@@525Lines Yyyyep. My dad was a truck driver *assistant* and immediately able to afford to rent an appartment by himself. My mother a secretary, able to rent a house by herself (crappy and old, but still, a whole house for yourself?!) Like WTF?! Jobs matching my degree turn out to be fairly rare (i was told it was easy to find a job with a degree) and most trades demand you have a diploma in that field, or just pay minimum wage which is just over half of what you need to rent a house in the non-regulated sector... The world well and truly has gone to shit since they decided rent and income don't have to follow the same increase anymore. A mortgage i can only get if i have a permanent contract job.

[@fritz46]

I tried this on my Archimedes L. It's a bit slower and needs 6s instead of 5s to get the rhythm right.

[@ariesdemiurge]

Me: Takes an hour to solve a math problem with a modern calculator. Jack Lemmon: *I'm gonna do what's called a Pro Gamer Move*

[@christiaandockers3755]

I own one of dese

[@wonderboy7768]

At least 0/0 didn't cause a space/time tear (or did it)?

[@CuriousMarc]

It did! It’s 1956 all over again ;-)

[@nux3960]

that's the future right there heheh

[@deeznutz-bn9sl]

What about zero divided by one?

[@VicVlasenko]

Oh, so from math perspective this machine gets correct result when dividing anything by zero - infinity :-)

[@CuriousMarc]

It sort of does! By happy mechanical accident it looks like :-)

[@KingSlimjeezy]

lovw the bwauty shots!

[@youngmasterzhi]

Make it play Seven Nation Army

[@wobbers99]

When you need a Maths degree to add one plus one.

[@billkinnersley4420]

I think instead of 55511 we used 311

[@oglass8823]

The precursor to all house/ techno/ etc. I’m calling out skrillex. Sample the REAL OG DOG!

[@bastian433]

So, there was a calculator you could use without batteries and solar :P

[@Pinefenario]

They look expensive machines back in the day

[@muluskuvuch]

it happens at 4:01

[@omsingharjit]

imagine the life without Electronic

[@dabiga2315]

"There's some instructions on the web on how to do it, they are _WRONG_ ..."

[@lmiddleman]

My Casio can show 5318008 upside down.

[@bigbaddms]

lmiddleman best comment 🤩

[@thekidkrow]

Riveting stuff

[@simontay4851]

Literally. It might have rivets holding parts together.

[@padraiggluck5633]

The West’s answer to the abacus.

[@JobvanderZwan]

Grandpa's chiptunes

[@MVVblog]

Kraftwerk hold my beer

[@unqualifiedforyoutube4383]

subitles: *[mUsIc]*

[@enzoferloni95]

Tengo uno quiero vender

[@pdrg]

Hoped you were going to play a joke and have 0/0 as pi... ;-)

[@CuriousMarc]

I did not even think about it. That would have been such a good one!

[@KutWrite]

I'd like to see more time and angles of the "naked" video.

[@CuriousMarc]

Right here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nmmXe6KkjpV9ntE