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This site was produced by Nigel Tout, Leicester, England.

Old enough to have had to use a slide rule ("guessing stick") at school and university, I experienced the vintage calculator years with awe at the amazing advances in micro-electronics and reductions in cost.
My first calculator was a Sinclair Scientific, bought in early 1975 when the cheapest discount price dropped to about my weekly earnings.

The collection started in about 1981 when a Friden EC132 electronic desk calculator with the cathode-ray-tube display was lying around redundant at the place I worked.
By then credit card sized calculators were available, and it seemed to be too interesting to just dump.
After approaching the person in the finance department responsible for capital equipment it was offered for £5 (about $8) together with as many other redundant mechanical and electronic calculators that I wanted from a store room. He was happy just to write them off the company's books.

This happened again about a year later when a Compucorp 324G Scientist was about to be dumped. In this way my collection got off to a good start with about 16 different desktop models.

No other acquisitions were made until in 1993 when the International Association of Calculator Collectors was mentioned in the magazine "New Scientist". This was a revelation - other people were interested in old calculators too !  - I joined immediately.
With inspiration from the various articles in the Association's "The International Calculator Collector" the collection has expanded greatly, especially in hand-held calculators.

The collection now numbers several hundred calculators, but, due to lack of space, it is mainly in commercial storage, though all calculators are photographed for ease of reference.

Your comments, information, corrections, etc., will be gratefully received and used to enhance the site. - please contact me.

Vintage Calculators

© Text & photographs copyright Nigel Tout  2000-2008 except where noted otherwise.