Welcome to the SolutionsSuite Calculator site.  We’ve worked hard to create easy to use calculators for nearly all aspects of life, including: Loans and Mortgages, Auto Loans, Mechanical and Engine Building, Home Brewing, Geometric shapes (Circles, Spheres, Cubes, Squares, Triangles, etc.), Cooking and Unit of measure converters.  More are being adding everyday so be sure to visit us whenever you need a calculator.

To find any calculator, type in a phrase or keyword such as “Balloon Payment” or “Rectangle” to find the available calculators or use our Calculator Index to navigate via our menus.

The History of the Calculator:  In it’s basic form, a calculator is a device used to aid in the calculation of numbers.  Other then using fingers or seeds to keep track of quantities, the calculator’s first incarnation is believed to be the Roman Abacus.  Versions of these are known to of existed as early as 2400 BC. As opposed to simply tallying quantities, the abacus is capable of arithmetic tasks. From that time, many other examples of analog calculators have been designed including Napier’s Bones invented by the Scottish Mathematician / Physicist John Napier to perform multiplications and divisions that he required, and the Slide Rule which was used for generations.  The slide rule was invented by William Oughtred in 1622.

German polymath Wilhelm Schickard built the 1st digital (although mechanical) calculator in 1623. It used gears and cogs from the clock industry and was sometimes called the calculating clock.

During the 1st half of the 20th century produced the gradual development of the mechanical calculator.  The Dalton adding-listing machine was introduced in 1902 and was the 1st calculator to use the familiar 10 key input keyboard.  Many manufacturers built “10 key add listers”.  In 1948 a calculator using a stepped-gear mechanism was created by Curt Herzstark.  It was to be known as the Curta Calculator.

In 1954, IBM demonstrated a all-transistor calculator and in 1957 the company released the IBM 608, the 1st commercial solid state calculator.  The 1st handheld calculator was developed by Texas Instruments in 1967.  It was capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  It’s output device (display) was a paper tape.

The 1970s introduced Integrated Circuits (ICs) to the calculator and the Pocket Calculator became the norm.  The IC allowed mini sizes and low power consumption.  The 1st pocket calculators were available in Japan and included the Canon Pocketronic, Sanyo ICC-0081, and the Sharp QT-8B “Micro Compet”.  The 1st true pocket sized calculator was the Busicom LE-120A “Handy”.  It was the 1st with a LED (Light Emitting Diode) display.  It was also the 1st calculator designed around the “calculator on a chip’ IC, the Mostek MK6010.  It also used four AA size batteries.

The Bowmar Brain (901B) was the 1st american made pocket calculator. It was released in 1971 and cost about $10.  In 1973, Texas Instruments introduced the SR-10 (to be followed by the SR-50) as the 1st algebraic calculator.  SR stood for Slide Rule.  In 1973, HP released the 1st programmable calculator, the HP-65.