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History of computing hardware
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===Calculators=== {{Main|Calculator}} [[File:Curta01.JPG|thumb|upright|The [[Curta]] calculator could also do multiplication and division.]] By the 20th century, earlier mechanical calculators, cash registers, accounting machines, and so on were redesigned to use electric motors, with gear position as the representation for the state of a variable. The word "computer" was a job title assigned to primarily women who used these calculators to perform mathematical calculations.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Light|first=Jennifer S. |date=July 1999|title=When Computers Were Women|journal=Technology and Culture|volume=40|issue=3|pages=455–483 |s2cid=108407884 |doi=10.1353/tech.1999.0128}}</ref> By the 1920s, British scientist [[Lewis Fry Richardson]]'s interest in weather prediction led him to propose [[human computer]]s and [[numerical analysis]] to model the weather; to this day, the most powerful computers on [[Earth]] are needed to adequately model its weather using the [[Navier–Stokes equations]].{{sfn|Hunt|1998}} Companies like [[Friden, Inc.|Friden]], [[Marchant Calculator]] and [[Monroe Calculator Company|Monroe]] made desktop mechanical calculators from the 1930s that could add, subtract, multiply and divide.<ref>{{cite web |title=Friden Model STW-10 Electro-Mechanical Calculator |url=https://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/fridenstw.html |access-date=11 August 2015|archive-date=2011-05-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514070335/http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/fridenstw.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1948, the [[Curta calculator|Curta]] was introduced by Austrian inventor [[Curt Herzstark]]. It was a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator and as such, a descendant of [[Gottfried Leibniz]]'s [[Stepped Reckoner]] and [[Charles Xavier Thomas|Thomas]]' [[Arithmometer]]. The world's first ''all-electronic desktop'' calculator was the British [[Bell Punch]] [[Sumlock ANITA calculator|ANITA]], released in 1961.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Simple and Silent |magazine=Office Magazine |date=December 1961 |page=1244}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |title='Anita' der erste tragbare elektonische Rechenautomat |trans-title='Anita' the first portable electronic computer |magazine=Buromaschinen Mechaniker |date=November 1961 |page=207}}</ref> It used [[vacuum tube]]s, cold-cathode tubes and [[Dekatron]]s in its circuits, with 12 cold-cathode [[Nixie tube|"Nixie"]] tubes for its display. The [[Sumlock ANITA calculator|ANITA]] sold well since it was the only electronic desktop calculator available, and was silent and quick. The tube technology was superseded in June 1963 by the U.S. manufactured [[Friden, Inc.|Friden]] EC-130, which had an all-transistor design, a stack of four 13-digit numbers displayed on a {{convert|5|in|cm|adj=on}} [[Cathode-ray tube|CRT]], and introduced [[reverse Polish notation]] (RPN).
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