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Sony's MD-5 calculator, which used ICs, was a big hit at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Besides, the world's first transistorized desk-top calculator, Sony's micro-TV, background music machine(MD-5), and VTR were selected together with a model of the gigantic tanker,  Nihon Maru, to represent Japan's technological advances at the Fair.
The MD-5, capable of computations up to 8-digits long, was praised for its ease of operation. Until then, calculators were only capable of addition and subtraction. Multiplication, for example, was done by adding the same figure over and over again. This calculator, however, worked like the human mind -- one would press 1+1 then the = sign, and 2 would appear. Such a simple operating system was a major innovation. With a familiar format like this, the calculator would have a much broader appeal. Anyone from a housewife to a student could easily master it.
The MD-5 used magnetic switching and a Nixie tube display which made use of the Burroughs patent. At the time, there were calculators which used the discharge tube in United Kingdom, or mechanical relay switches elsewhere. Uemura's calculator substituted transistor switches for the latter. This attracted the attention of American researchers engrossed in the development of large-scale computers. In this sense, Uemura's work was a great success.
The M of MD-5 referred to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. D was the trial model number. The research and development engineers were fully confident that Minerva was on their side.
The project moved from the R&D stage down the long road toward mass production. First, they had to further improve its functional operations. Model MD-6 incorporated a decimal point. Then came MM-7, another step in the direction of being compact and lightweight. It was appropriately nicknamed Micro-Math. Each successive model incorporated some new feature or improvement. MX-11 was the experimental model of the ICC-500 SOBAX, the electronic desktop calculator, which appeared on the market in June 1967. SOBAX was a name coined by Hatoyama that meant solid state abacus. (The abacus was also known as abax. ) He chose this name because it referred to its ease of operation and capacity to do complex calculations at high speeds, similar to the abacus. After Sony's development of the MD-5, electronics makers around the world began to enter the portable calculator business, which accounts for the popularity of desktop calculators today. SOBAX, however, led the way to the extraordinary popularity of desktop calculators.
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Operating systems in most of today's calculators are derived from this SOBAX. They include the disappearing 0 feature (0's in columns to the left of the number disappear from the display), the floating decimal point, the rounding off feature, percentage computations and reciprocals. Because of its unprecedented capabilities, SOBAX was put on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Still, with a price tag of 260,000 yen, the ICC-500 was a far cry from being a replacement for the abacus. What housewife would use a 260,000 yen calculator to do household bookkeeping?
It was decided that it could only be marketed toward design or accounting companies. However, these people were used to mechanical calculators and had misgivings about readjusting to a new operating system based on the computing processes taught at school. From a marketing perspective, SOBAX was far from a success.
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