Calculator

Calculator Components

If you've read through the previous page, you'll be aware by the time you read this that hand-held calculatorsneed single-chip microprocessors to perform their functions. How do you turn on the microprocessor? It all starts with the information located on the outside of your device.

Many modern calculators come with a tough plastic casing, featuring simple openings in the front that allow rubber to penetrate, as a television remote would. With a single touch, you complete a circuit under the rubber. This sends electrical impulses across a circuit board beneath. These impulses travel through the microprocessor, which interprets the data and displays an output to the calculator's display screen.

Displays on early electronic calculators were made up of LEDs or lighting emitting diodes. Moderner models that use less power use the liquid crystal display also known as LCD. Instead of producing light LCDs move light molecules around to create a pattern on the screen and will not require as much electricity.

Early calculators also needed to be connected to a power source or use heavy battery power. But by the end of the in the 70s the solar cell technology had become inexpensive and effective enough to be utilized in consumer electronics. The solar cell generates electricity when the photons of sun's rays are absorption by semiconductors, like silicon, inside the cell. This releases electrons and the electric field created by the solar cell ensures that they are moving in the exact direction, resulting in electrical current. (Something like an LCD calculator would only need low-level power, which explains why the solar cells are small.) In the early 1980s, many producers of basic calculators utilized energy-producing solar cells. More powerful scientific and graphing calculators nevertheless make use of batteries.

In the next chapter We'll dive more deeply at binary codes and how the calculator actually completes its job.Hello, Beghilos!

It is possible that you utilized the pocket calculator at one point or another to spell words upside-down such as 07734 ("hELLO"). But did you know that the 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, most calculatorsdepend on integrated circuits generally referred to as chips. They use transistors to add and subtract, and also to carry out computations on logarithms to perform division, multiplication and more complicated calculations such as using exponents and solving square roots. The more transistors in an integrated circuit it, the more sophisticated its capabilities may be. A majority of standard pocket calculators have identical, or very similar, integrated circuitry.

Like every electronic device, the processors inside the calculatorwork to function by reducing any information you give it to its binary equivalent. Binary number transform our data in the form of a base-two system in which we represent each numeral with either a 1 or a zero, which doubles every time we move one digit. By "turning on" each of the positions -- in other words, placing an 1 in the digitwe can conclude that the digit is part of our total number.

Microchips implement binary logic by turning transistors on and off literally by using electricity. Thus, for instance for instance, if you want to add 2 and 2 and 2 + 2, your calculator will make each "2" to binary (which looks like this 10) and after that, add them all together. When you add to the "ones" column (the two zeros), gives you 0. The chip is able to discern that there is no number at the top. When it adds the digits inside the "tens" column, the chip will get 1+1. It recognizes that both numbers are positive, and- since there are no two's in binary notationis able to move the positive reply one higher, creating a sum of 100 -that is binary in terms and is equal to 4 [source: Wright].

The sum of this is passed through the input/output chip of Our integrated circuit. The circuit applies the same algorithm to the display. Have you ever observed that the numbers on an alarm clock or calculator as well as an alarm clock are comprised of segments? Each of these parts of the numerals is turned on or off using the identical binary logic. Thus, the processor will take the number "100" and translates it by turning on certain sections of lines on the display to make the numeral 4.

We'll take a look at the impact the calculator's influence has on the world and how we can expect to see them evolve to the future.The Difference Engine

An engineer working in the Hessian army devised the predecessor to today's computer in 1786. His concept was the creation of mathematical tables by computing the difference between the various equations. Because it performed this process continuously and in a controlled manner, these "difference engines" are considered significant precursors to the modern computer. A Swedish father and son team, known as the Scheutzes, developed a functional difference engine in 1853 . It is still on display inside the Smithsonian Institute.