Tech Tangents has been restoring vintage Sony SOBAX calculators which used Nixie tubes, dating from the 1960s, and has now repaired two Sony calculators dating from the 1970s.
These early machines don’t use integrated circuits but modules of discrete components encapsulated in epoxy and they have delay line memory, now labelled as ‘unrepairable’.
The vintage calculators grew out of an engineer’s project to use scrapped transistors that failed to meet specifications.
The carrying handle is just a nice retro touch, as is the option to add an external battery pack turning the machine into a 14-pound portable calculator.
The 1960s calculator had a $1,000 price tag in 2022 money.
