Calculator

Calculator Components

If you've read the first page, you'll know by the time you read this that hand-held calculatorsneed microprocessors with a single chip to function. But how do you activate the microprocessor? It all starts with the information in the exterior of the device.

Most modern calculators have a robust plastic casing, featuring simple openings in the front, which allow the rubber to move through, much like a remote for television. Pressing a button you complete a circuit underneath the rubber, which sends electrical impulses through a circuit board below. These impulses travel through the microprocessor. It interprets the data and displays an information readout to the calculator's display screen.

The displays of most early electronic calculators were constructed of LEDs, also known as lights-emitting diodes. Moderner models that use less power are equipped with the the liquid crystal display also known as LCD. Rather than producing light, LCDs change the arrangement of light molecules to create a pattern on the screen and don't require as much energy.

Early calculators also required to be connected to a power source or use heavy batteries. In the latter part of the 70s the solar cell technology was becoming affordable and effective enough to be utilized in consumer electronic. A solar cell creates electricity when photons from sunlight get absorbed into semiconductors, like silicon, inside the cell. The electrons are released, and the electric field of the solar cell makes them moving in the exact direction, which creates and electric energy. (Something like an LCD calculator will require only low-level power, which is the reason the solar cells are small.) In the 1980s, a majority of makers of simple calculators were taking advantage of technologies based on solar cells. Higher-powered graphing and scientific calculators nevertheless make use of batteries.

In the next chapter we'll dive deeper at binary codes and the way in which the calculator actually does its job.Hello Beghilos!

You might have used your pocket calculator at some point for spelling words upside-down, such as 07734 ("hELLO"). But did you know this language actually has a name? It's known as "BEGhILOS," after the most common letters you can make with a simple calculator display.

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How a Calculator Calculates

As you've seen on the previous pages, the vast majority of calculatorsdepend on integrated circuits generally referred to as chips. These circuits employ transistors to subtract and add and also to carry out computations on logarithms in order to achieve division, multiplication and more complicated calculations including using exponents and the calculation of square root. The more transistors an integrated circuit contains in it, the more advanced the functions it can perform. A majority of standard pocket calculators feature identical, or very similar, integrated circuitry.

As with all electronic devices, the chips inside the calculatorwork using reducing any information you give in to binary. binary numbers are able to translate numbers into a base-two system, where we represent each number by either a 1 or a zero, which doubles each time we change a digit. By "turning on" each of the positions -- in other words, by putting an 1 in the digitthis means that the digit is part of our total number.

Microchips employ binary logic by turning transistors to turn off and on by using electricity. For example in the case of add 2 + 2, your calculator will make each "2" to binary (which is like this 10) and then add them up. When you add"1" to "ones" column (the two zeros) results in the number 0: The computer can recognize that there's nothing in the beginning. If it adds the numbers in the "tens" column, the chip has 1+1. It observes that both are positive and -as there aren't 2's in binary notation -shifts the positive response one number to the left, and gets a total of -- which is binary in terms and is equal to 4 [source: Wright].

This sum is routed through the input/output circuit in our integrated circuit, which is able to apply the same algorithm to the display. Have you noticed the way the numbers on the back of a calculator or alarm clock consist of lines that are segmented? Each one of the numbers can be toggled on or off with the same binary logic. This means that the processor takes that "100" and translates it by turning off or turning on certain sections of lines in the display for the creation of the number 4.

The next section will look at the impact the calculator's influence has on the world and how we can anticipate to see them develop over the future.The Difference Engine

An engineer of the Hessian army devised the predecessor to the modern computer in 1786. The idea was to create a machine that could print mathematical tables by calculating the differences between various equations. Because it performed this process continuously and in a controlled manner this type of "difference engines" are considered essential precursors to today's computer. The Swedish father and son group, the Scheutzes, built a working difference engine in 1853 . It is currently on display inside Smithsonian Institute. Smithsonian Institute.