Hi, it's vintage calculator time. And you know, I love vintage calculators, so let's take a look at one. But none of this electronic calculator rubbish. No, this is a pure mechanical calculator or an electromechanical calculator because it does have a motor in it which drives a whole bunch of mechanical wizardry and you can do a basic functions.

It's pretty much a Four banger I've got to tell you. Which is basically a four function calculator. None of that square root rubbish. None of your, uh, scientific functionality or things like that.

But this bad boy from a company called Facet which is a Swedish company hi to all my Swedish viewers, dates from 1967 and it was pretty much I believe only sold for like, uh, two years 67. I think it might have finished in 68 or something like that, because that's about the date that electronic calculators sort of started to take over because Texas Instruments uh, actually came out with their first calcul electronic calculator prototype in 1967 as well, it was called the Caltech. I'll try and include a photo out of it if I can get one. And then in 1968, Hewlett Packard came out with their 9100 electronic desktop calculator.

And of course, in 1969, Busycom came out with their calculator. and they actually contracted Intel to produce the famous 404 Micro processor for use in that calculator. And then Intel of course said hey, will you let us like sell this chip to other people for other things And busy Comm went. oh yeah, no worries And of course Intel was born and the 4004 became the 8008 and the 8080 and the 8088 and blew up.

We're still using them today. So anyway, Um, back in 1965 though. Um, at Uh Titi. I did a lot of like a ton of early development before.

So this is before the Uh Caltech? uh, Calculator prototype. You might know this name. Uh, Jack Kilby. He was the Director of the Ti Labs there.

He actually who invented the Um Integrated Circuit in 1958. So Jack Kilby actually, Um, in 1965 actually started uh, developing. Uh, you know, calculator chips for Texas Instruments calculators. So there you go.

So that actually pre-dates I don't know how long it would have taken to design this, probably a couple of years. It is. as we'll see inside. it's just absolutely incredible.

But you know, it's kind of sad to think that the designers of this thing when they were designing it. um, sort of. maybe. Did they know at the time that the writing was on the wall for mechanical calculators? Because pretty much by by 1970.

Um, these things were toast. I mean, everyone was using electronic calculators. But as I said, even in the late 60s, you could buy electronic calculators? So yeah, these things, you designed this and it's only got a couple of years left. And that's it.

Just the market was for mechanical calculators, practically completely wiped out. But hey, if you do have a grey beard and you do remember these things, you do remember using them. Let us know when you last used one. So while electronic calculators did actually exist at the time that this thing was uh, designed and developed, um, they were actually much, much bigger than this.

This is actually quite relatively compact. Um, for the day for a calculator slash adding machine. Who imported this bad boy? Ga Hall Associates adding listing machines, calculators and typewriters. Beautiful.

Anyway, yeah, made in Sweden. only draws 70 watts? No worries. Up Standard Iec Power connector on the thing. That's like, really quite amazing.

And yep, it is a four function mechanical calculator. Now it's got three displays on it. This one here is the entry register. The uh digits as you actually press, uh, the buttons here will actually pop up here and then shift across, shift across like that as you enter them, and then when you uh, do a function buttons, it'll uh, transfer that number up to the accumulator up here.

and then this is a 13 digit accumulator and that will also accumulate value. So if you add in numbers, you know, if you put if you enter 10 here and well, if you clear it all, enter 10, then 10 will transfer up to here. Then if you enter another 10 and then press the add button, then this will, uh, the accumulator up here will go to 20.. And we've got a third display over here.

This is only an eight digit one that's actually a counter uh based thing to tell you how many numbers you've added up, how many you've subtracted, and I believe some other uh, functionality as well. So it was. You know it was fairly rudimentary and of course, uh, none of this. uh, automatic decimal point? rubbish.

If you want a decimal point, you had to actually manually put where your decimal point is so you know you really had to know your stuff. So it's really not as easy to use as today's electronic calculators. You really had to know how to use these because you might see that there's an add button. There's a divide button.

There's a plus button. There's a multiplication. There's an equals. Um, but where's the minus? Where's the minus? Well, I believe you had to do uh, this sub here and then do sub minus and that would instead of dividing it'd do your minus.

So it's pretty rudimentary. So it's got, uh, these are the three different displays that you can actually clear. So if you wanted to like, clear the whole thing. I believe that you press, start these three buttons here and it's got a multiply and divide mode.

Unfortunately, I can't shift it. In fact, this is the problem with this thing. I can't the equals I can push, but I can't push any other button. It is just completely gummed up.

All of the mechanical wizardry inside is just. you know, it's completely stuck and apparently this is, uh, quite common. Uh, for machines. You know, if this particular vintage wouldn't happen back in the day, of course, But you know, you put them in storage for long enough and these things just all seize up because the hundreds of cogs and other things in here and all the mechanisms they they need.

uh, you know, a lot of grease and other lubricants and things like that And it's just, yeah. over the decades, it just dries up. so unfortunately, um, yeah. I, I'm not going to be able to get this working for you, so I don't know what happens when we take it apart.

Whether or not we're going to be able to see anything operate. I'm kind of doubting it. so this might actually be a relatively, um, quick teardown. Anyway, I have shot this in 4k for your visual satisfaction.

Let's go. Oh, but wait, hang on. One feature of this thing is that it's got rollers on the back and you can just lift it up and apparently well roll it backwards. Not sure they don't work too well anymore.

It's a little bit crusty. Anyway, I forgot to mention the model number. This is the Ca1-13-13 Of course, because it had a 13-digit accumulator. I'm sure that's the reason why.

Anyway, let's take it apart, All right. Let's see if we can lift this up and have a look inside. How do I get it? That lever out of the way? Oh, that's annoying. No, it was just stuck at the back.

There we go and we're in like Flynn. Oh, look at that. we've got there. You go.

This would be I. I know you want to see all the mechanical porn, but bear with me. now. this would have been I'm guessing uh.

like sound dampener um, material because these things are apparently like, apparently were very loud and you operate it without the cover on it? Then well, it's even worse. So yeah, maybe I don't know. That'd be a guess. Oh yeah, look at this bad boy.

Wow. Oh, we've got a it's got a bug. It's got a bug. I'll show you in a second.

Oh, Reefer Reefer Madness. Check it out. Reefer Madness. Yes.

Oh beautiful. Anyway, that's a genuine bug. Look at that. No wonder it doesn't work.

Yeah, so our little buggy friend there looks like they've had a bit of a good time in here. I see some uh well, you know, various webs and things. But anyway, there is the overalls. Brooke Ovrems motor in the thing.

That's what drives it all. and uh yes, it looks like there is just like a single motor and the rest of it is all just mechanical wizardry. So uh yeah, this I don't know. This is like a mains input.

um thing. what have they got some filtering or something in there would be my oh yep, yep there we go. check it out. There you go.

Is that uh, is that a uh, like a a like a bi-metallic overload switch or something like that. Perhaps. But anyway. um yeah.

made in Sweden? Swedish cap? Um yeah. that I think the magic smokers probably escaped from that. perhaps. But uh yeah.

Oh, look at this and there's beautiful. There's a bit of stuff here that's like foam. Well, no. Check it out.

Caught on the convenient oh, it's just disintegrated. watch. watch this sort of stuff. It just.

it just disintegrates. This stuff is probably filled with it. And yeah, and all the dried up grease and everything else and all that sort of stuff. And no wonder this thing doesn't work.

It'd need a massive, uh, clean and you'd really have to know what you're doing. You'd almost have to like dunk the entire thing in some sort of, you know, solvent to, uh, loosen it all up. Probably have to chuck it in there for a week or something. Thank the maker.

This oil bath is going to feel so good. But uh yeah. Anyway, if you got any idea how to, uh, get this thing going again, please leave it in the comments because it'll be absolutely gorgeous. I don't know if we can rotate, actually, mechanically move any of these.

Oh oh yeah, yeah, things are moving. Maybe we can get it to do something? Perhaps. No, it just stopped. It's not even going on a full rotation.

it stops in the other direction too. So anyway, I got no idea what I'm doing, but it's very unlikely we can get it to do anything with all the gum gummed up gears though. Uh, that'd be my guess. But look, I'm not even going to pretend that I know how mechanical calculators work.

because if, like, I doubt we can even tear this thing down. Like if I tore this down and you don't know what you're doing and you don't keep track of absolutely everything, then like you're just gonna come a gutsy, you would never, ever be able to track where everything went, let alone put the damn thing back together again. And there's more of that foam. Oh that horrible foam stuff.

Oh, let's just get that out of there if it all humanly possible. Oh no, no, it's going to disintegrate. Oh no. I I think I get the vacuum cleaner on that.

Oh yeah, there we go. That's better. I guarantee you. I'm not going to be able to do this thing justice.

I mean, I just like, I don't know my mechanical calculator design. You can see, there's see the pins in there on each. You know, like everything has its purpose. Like this rod going over here has its purpose.

Like this lever here engages like with this spring that engages this up here. which does something? Does that? Is that part of the clearing mechanism? Uh, perhaps. Look, I've got absolutely no idea. So as I said, uh, as you enter the numbers, these are the entry wheels.

Uh, down here. And as you like, press a number. the number will appear here and this whole carriage will actually slide across. So this is your display window here and you'll get.

So if you press one digit, you'll get one digit there and then a slide across. You'll get two digits, three digits, four digits, and so on. And then when you, uh, do your operation, it'll transfer somehow from these wheels up to these wheels up here. So that's where all the magic goes on deep down inside.

And I'd love to be able to like tear this down, but I really don't want to. It's too gorgeous to like. It's just a display piece on its own like this. I mean, it's a shame that we actually can't see like actual more of the operation of it.

Um, you know, maybe if you got the motor out of the way and then you started to spin things, if you were able to spin some things by hand, you could do that. But oh, check it out. like oh okay, I see. hang on.

I see why this is stopping. Check it out, have a look right inside there like that. This is why it stops going back in this direction because that actually hits that. And then if we go up here, we see this is all that that is curved in there.

Not sure if you can see that and then it stops in that direction. For some reason I'm not entirely sure why. so not even sure. Like that thing doesn't seem to do any like it just travels in that groove.

that slot that, um, angled slot inside that wheel there. and uh, you can actually see it's all you can actually see. Like some of it actually. the grease looks okay, um, the grit.

You know. look, there's still, there's still grease on them. their wheels. Um, so I you know, but I don't know, like everything seems gummed up inside.

I can't the the keys just don't do anything and you don't have to. I don't believe you have to have it powered up for the I mean maybe you do have to actually have it powered up before it will do anything. but I've actually powered this thing up and it does absolutely nothing. But that doesn't explain why the equals key can go down and nothing else can go down.

and it doesn't explain why that you know this one can't move and you know all that sort of jazz. But jeez, how serviceable would something like this have been? Do you think? Leave it in the comments down below, I got like I can imagine that if something went wrong internally. wow, it'd be quite the effort um to get this to get in there and I'm not sure if they gave much thought to servicing and stuff like that. but you know, like you can get these plates off and then this plate here comes off and then you know, maybe this top section here comes off so you can get into the individual wheels and things like that so you can sort of, um maybe you know, take it apart piece by piece.

I don't know. Maybe it maybe there was a lot of thought put into actually. uh, repairing and servicing these things because you know, like it doesn't have just one oil port. Um, did you have to oil these things regularly? I'm sure there would have been like a service schedule for these things.

like yeah, every 12 months please send it in for you know, a lube and oil change. You guessed it, there's a nerd on the Internet who has torn not only torn this down completely, has a complete disassembly procedure and reassembly procedure and overhaul procedures for this thing. Unbelievable. Hats off to John Wolfe.

I'll link this in down below. Go check it out. Um, he's from Melbourne, fellow Aussie and calculating machines and uh what do you know he's actually got. Check it out here.

It is the facet uh C113 and here is all the detailed teardown of it. Look at these gorgeous photos. can I expand those? Oh I can't but look at it, look at all the obviously like he's completely. He says he's like serviced a couple of these things and rebuilt them.

And all of this is just for the hand cranked model, which curiously has exactly the same model number. It's the C113, but this is like the automated version of the C113. So um, but I believe that the like, the base, like all of the base mechanisms, and the pinwheel, uh, stuff and all that is like. it works exactly the same.

It just requires a, you know, and a few extra bells and whistles for the model that we've got. So extra steps and look at all the diecast alloy assemblies for this thing. Anyway, this is a pinwheel, uh, calculator apparently. and they all.

most pinwheel calculators apparently operate very similar. So yeah, I mean, there's obviously complications involved when you start doing more than edition and things like that. But anyway, I won't go into details it. John's already gone into how all the rotor assembly works and the pinwheels.

um, and the rotor pin alignments and the rotor bar details. and the rotor carriage and the uh oh look look. And there's the base of the keyboard assembly absolute and and then the keys. How the actual keys work.

Absolutely look. Every key is like different it. like keys, you're all weak keys into a different location in the in the thing. It's just oh wow.

And the photos are just gorgeous. I wish you could get those in high res. Wow. I like.

I'm just absolutely blown away. Look at this. He's itemized ever. look how clean and gorgeous this looks.

Oh oh, and oh. the carry rotor. There you go is two separate sections mounted in concentric shafts. It reminds me like the turbo encapsulator.

Um, like the carry rotor installed like I'd Unbelievable. Like the drive chain. Here you go like it's all here. So there's no way like this is like.

I don't know how many decades he's been working on mechanical, uh, computers. but he obviously knows all about him. anyway. If I did want to disassemble mine, he has a detailed step-by-step guide.

It's only. Ah, this is a disassembly procedure. 106 steps, No worries. Um, in cleaning, He's got notes on overhauling mechanical calculators.

Let's see if he has the C3po oil bath. Uh thing. Um, and if you want to reassemble it. Wow.

There's like actually more to reassemble it. There's like 180 steps to reassemble it. So it's like and there's variations and reassembly in the the roto linear bearings. There you go.

So that's a separate thing. Unbelievable. Hats off to John. This is just absolutely amazing.

So Linkedin down below. Do yourself a favor and check this out. This is mechanical pornography. Look at his overhaul guide like the tools and equipment you need.

Like I I imagine. Just like dumbass Dave. Just like disassembling this thing and bumming around trying to get it fixed. No like it's just decades of experience gone into synthetic and thread, synthetic materials and how to overhaul.

Yeah, because if you've got synthetic, you know, plastic materials, they can. Is that a crack in there? I presume that they can crack and you know how to repair and reassemble it. Like unbelievable. John Wolfe wins the Internet Nerd of the Year award.

Yeah. 2020 Internet Nerd of the Year. We sir salute you. And then you know what does like that lever do And this arm obviously swings in and out and like it's just.

I don't know. It's so complicated. Imagine having to actually design this thing and think about all this in three dimensions. You've got to remember this is like before, the um, advent of like, mechanical Cad packages and stuff like that.

So this is all done. Um, on paper, there's that gorgeous reefer capacitor. again. Oh reefer madness.

It's upside down. all the electrolytes gonna fall out and check it out. If I do actually plug in the power, there's none of this power switch rubbish. It does actually attempt to drive the motor.

Um, there you go in that direction, but I guess it's just gummed up. There you go. I got the front face plate off, which just covers that, but not sure. It gives us much more interest in detail.

This plate here, I would be guessing slides with the entry register perhaps. But yeah, I do. Hats off to the team that designed this. I mean, it's just absolutely brilliant.

I mean, check out the only working key. We've got. the enter key. The enter key moves this sliding bar down the bottom here and so it.

it basically hits on that. I don't think it actually goes anywhere else inside that I can see, but this bar. Obviously it slides. when you hit the enter key, this goes across, the bar, goes all the way across here, and then allows this lever this far lever over here to come down.

I mean, that's just like it's just nuts. Check it out There it is. So that lever comes down and that is the equals somehow. But yeah, I don't know how.

Then that drops into place and then the equals is then linked to. Well, there's something down here. I've got no idea what that is and it's linked to this, which then goes up here, which links to this and then this links into here and then that links to something else in it. links to.

like these two. there's two extra ones in there. I'm not sure if you can see that, but this is just like it's just silly. This is just insane.

and then it's up here and it's like this spring holds it back in place and then it goes up to this main bit up here and this is all part of the equals mechanism. Um, that. like how would you design all this. It's just nuts.

Absolutely nuts. and like I just you haven't even gotten in anywhere inside this thing yet. Then on this side here, here's our negative key. So this is all these springs and this arm here which then links into that thing which then links all the way up to here and then that goes inside to the shaft which goes right along there.

and it's I. Come on. I have to read the comments down below to see if anyone got this far without noticing the zero here. One, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine with the zero in the middle.

That was very deliberate now. or was that for a speed? Was this like a user interface experience speed of entry kind of thing? Or did it have to do with the mechanical design of this thing? I don't know. Leave your thoughts in the comments down below. I do love the gigantic metal spring down in there.

I don't know what that's for, but I just love it. It's enormous. I'm really struggling to think what I can show you now because I really just don't want to take all this apart and then not be able to get it back together again if I can. Like, You know, if somebody comes up with a really good suggestion for like, you know, dipping this in something and just cleaning it all up and then crossing your fingers and hope it.

Uh, hope it works again once you give it a nice oil bath. Oh boy, I really am disappointed that I can't actually show you this operating. I'm personally disappointed because I want to see this thing go clunk clunk clunk clunk. And yeah, it'd just be so satisfying to see and hear everything.

Like as you push a button, the motor turns and then these cogs turn and then this shifts over and then boom as you do that. and then it actually shifts it up and not just shifts it up. but then it'll do the operation internally with all sorts of, you know, cogs. And yeah, this is like a, you know, poor man's Babbage machine.

You know, Four Banger Babbage machine. Really. So unfortunately, I'll have to leave it there. and please leave it in the comments down below.

If you know how to like, uh, you know, restore this thing, ungunk it because odds are it still works It just like needs a proper service to unstick all the keys. As I said, equals one's the only one that seems to actually do anything at all. And uh, let us know, please in the comments down below. and especially if you've used one of these mechanical calculator bad boys, Because as old as I am, this is actually before my time.

If you can believe it. anyway, I hope you enjoyed that brief look there at a mechanical calculator. Oh beautiful thing of beauty. Joy forever catch you next time.

Behold, the wonka mobile thing of beauty is a joy forever. You.