Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I Am The Computer Now – Friden STW10 Mechanical Calculator”.
[ Riley ]: This is a computer. ( machine, clanking, ), (, upbeat, instrumental music, ) ( bell dings ), Or at least back in the 1930s forties and fifties the person operating. It was a computer.. You see back then a fully automatic calculator like this one was mind-blowing allowing people to add subtract, multiply and divide large numbers without the use of pen and paper. These days.
That’S all done electronically.. But when Richard a local fan reached out and said, “, Hey I’ve got one of these.” We jumped at the chance to become the very thing we love the most computers. Thanks to SignalRGB for sponsoring this video. SignalRGB is a free application that syncs RGB lighting across Your entire setup and works for brands like Coursera Razor Logitech and more. Check it out at the link down below. ( upbeat, instrumental music ). When I was in school teachers would insist. We learned to do long division by hand because you’re not going to be going around carrying a calculator everywhere.
You go. Well jokes on you Ms. Parsons ,’cause. Now everyone is doing exactly that. And trust me. This baby does long division., But back in the nineties, Ms.
Parsons could be forgiven for thinking that pocket calculators wouldn’t be as ubiquitous today., Seeing as many older folks back then may have grown up with something a lot more like this, the Friden STW 10.. If we were to go back another 30 years, there’s a good chance, we’d find one of these chunky boys on an accountant’s desk.. In fact, you may have already seen something like this, either online or in a stirring historical drama like “, Hidden Figures.”. No, it’s not a typewriter, although it does sort of share some similarities.
There’s a sliding carriage on top and a large set of keys on the body. But these are all numbers and there’s no ink or paper needed., At least not any, that you insert into the machine itself.. The first set of mechanical number displays on the carriage is the accumulator row, which can display results up to 20 digits long.
For reference. Most pocket calculators today only display around eight or 10., and my phone can enter up to 15 digits before it starts using exponents.. The row below that is the counter register.. It serves a couple of different functions, just like how our new indoor sweater from LTTStore.com keeps you warm and boost your confidence.. Don’T quote me on that.. The first function is how it acts as an item counter when adding or subtracting., And the second is operations counting when multiplying or dividing.. You can lock these rows or clear them with some button presses. Or you can use one of these guys down here to set where the decimal starts for division.. I wan na start it there. Now down here.
One numb pad would be bushly., So we got two. Uh. This little one over here is used only for entering multiple cans more on that later and the big one is used for everything else. Each digit has its own column and you enter your total value by Pushing down keys as they would appear on paper., So, for example, for 1337. We push them in order like this one.
Three, three seven., If any column, has nothing pressed that counts as zero., It’s a little confusing at first, but you get used to it. Pretty quickly. Everything is housed in a shell made of what we think is aluminum covered in plastic.. That’S pretty easy to take off. And there’s a giant pad of foam underneath to keep this mechanical beast from shaking your table.
To death. I mean this thing is heavy. (, Riley, grunting ).
Oh I’m doing math., I feel smarter. You can see on the inside. It’S basically a giant mishmash of gears levers, springs and arms.. It’S like mechanical spaghetti in there..
It is incredibly complex. And the amount of engineering that went into something like this is absolutely insane.. There were earlier models like the 1941 Friden H8, but these were often limited to addition and subtraction and weren’t driven electronically.. The STW 10 came out a few years later and gave simple computers like us: the ability to multiply and divide big numbers, easily. Hey..
What do you say we crunched some numbers So to add. You enter a value on the main pad and add it to the top row like this. ( machine clanks, ) Bam..
Now we enter whatever number we wan na. Add to that number by entering new values and pressing the add button, again. ( machine, clanks, ) Oh..
So what it’s actually doing is setting a value on a number of dials and then taking everything up by the new value in sequence.. It’S a lot like how you would do paper math, adding each digit until there’s an overflow., Then adding the overflow to the end.. If we want to subtract, it’s basically doing the exact opposite by starting with a value and then decreasing it in sequential order by the new value. Multiplication works in a similar way.. It’S basically just addition in groups, except this time we get to use the cool, multiple canned numb.
Pad. I’ve been waiting so long.. This one actually works like what you’d see in a modern calculator where you enter each digit serially from left to right, and it brings up your value on this little display here.. Next, we enter our multiplier on the big numb, pad.
( button, pressing ) Press the mult key and look at it. Go. Whoa. ( machine clanking ).
That is so cool. We’ll get some slow-mo footage. But as it’s going, you can basically watch it in real-time working through the numbers. Brute, forcing addition of our multiple can as many times as I’ve told it to.. Because, again I am the computer..
Division is basically the same thing, but backwards like subtraction. Enter your first number on the big key pad. ( button, pressing ) Set your decimal place and hit enter div.
( machine clanks ). This puts the carriage to where it needs to go according to our decimal point., Clear the keyboard if it didn’t automatically and enter your divisor on the same key pad. ( button pressing ) Now we’re gon na have to hit both of these divide. Keys.
We’ll get to why there are two in a moment, but for now look at it. Go. ( machine rattling, ) Whoa., Oh man that never gets old. Just like hitting that subscribe button never gets old..
We’Ve got our eyes on an antique mechanism, video in the future, that you don’t wan na miss. Now, for the most part, this should just work. It crunches through the numbers to the nearest decimal point and gives us our result, which is give me a sec. ( Machine rattling, ), 33.3, repeating of course, but if you were to accidentally divide a number by zero, the machine can get stuck in an infinite loop., (, Riley, laughs, ).
What Back in the forties and fifties if a room of accountants or something was using automatic calculators without this handy div stop function? We have right here, there’d, actually be a guy in the room whose job it was to basically just listen for this infinite loop and walk around resetting machines. (, laughs ). Now this bad boy is pretty well lube.. Thanks to Richard., Did you lube it up? [ Richard ], Oh yeah., Oh yeah., But rapidly moving metal moving for a long time gets really hot.. So if there was no button or no button, man you’d find out what was at the end of that infinite. Loop. Molten destruction. At this moment, you’re, probably screaming at me at the top of your lungs.
Riley.. Why does this have two division buttons? Why I’m gon na need you to calm down. By the time division and multiplication were added. Someone else had already beaten, Friden to the punch and patented a single button division system preventing Friden from including it in this model..
If you press only the left division button, the division will take place, but you’ll get only the tens compliment of the expected result.. Now the STW 10 was only designed to do addition, subtraction multiplication and division, but some masters of the universe actually figured out how to get square roots. On this thing, how you ask Wizardry.
Tynan. So in order to actually do a square root on a calculator like this, you have to follow a number of different types of algorithms to actually do it.. These machines don’t have a push square root button, but math has developed algorithms that you can use to quickly calculate a square root on a machine like this or on paper or anywhere else. For this machine. The algorithm that we’re looking at using is the sum of odd squares.. Four, our sake it works. And I’ll. Take you through the steps of how it works for this 69420.. First up, you move your carriage all the way over and make sure that it’s aligned with the 10th digit of your number..
Then you enter plus five times. ( machine clanking, ), Now you’re off and move the carriage all the way over. Now we’ll go through and actually get into the weeds of calculating this number out. You put a five in the next column over. This is the column. We’Re actually calculating along and you start subtracting away. As we’re going through each increment, we’re essentially adding another one of the odd numbers through some math magic. But as we’re subtracting away subtract one subtract, two. ( bell: dings )! That’S when you know that’s the number you’re. Looking for., You add it: back.
( bell: dings ) Shift the carriage over one. Shift the five over one and start again., And this is where it starts getting a little bit repetitive, but it works. ( machine, clanks, ), There’s another underflow.. Add it back clear. The five moved it over.
( machine, clanks, ) Shift the carriage. And again. ( machine clanking, ) Underflow..
Add it back clear: the five move it over shift: the carriage and subtract. ( machine clanking ) Their underflow hit it back and repeat. In this particular algorithm. We’Re breaking it up by individual digit, similar to like what you do on paper., So we’re starting with the biggest number and slowly shifting our way down as we move on.
And that’s an easier way to try to handle numbers that are five plus digits long, especially For a square root., ( machine, clanking, ) And switch. ( bell dings ). Now that we’re on this last line, we can’t move the five over anymore, but we just cleared off shift over the carriage and do the same step again, just without the extra five. ( machine, clanking, ) And now we’ve done the square root but where’s. The answer. You have a whole bunch of different numbers on the board..
For this, it’s actually the board itself.. We have 2. 6. 3.
0. .4. 7. 6. 7. 5. 4. 1..
So this kind of shows the power of you know interesting approaches to try to solve calculations that used to take minutes hours days in an order of magnitude, less time., [ Plouffe ]. How long would that take you to do on pen and paper I’ll have to learn how to do it on pen and paper, first., (, laughs, ). So what happened to calculators like this? Well, Friden sold thousands of these things primarily to accounting and insurance companies and then ended production of the STW 10 in 1966. As the EC-130, a transistor calculator with a 13-digit capacity started taking over.
Friden was bought out by Singer, known primarily for their sewing machines. At the time, and eventually died off in the seventies as pocket calculators like this one hit the market. I mean as awesome as this absolute unit. Is it’s pretty obvious why these started winning out.
12,872 multiplied by 4,307 and go ( machine rattling, ), Yeah., Sorry, Friden.! Still, love ya.! If you wan na try and buy one of these and try and restore it yourself, they seem to go from anywhere between two and $ 500. If you can find one. You’ll also be lucky if yours arrives in perfectly working condition.. If you want any tips on restoring or using them, make sure to check out Richard on Twitch.
Twitch.tv/Scrobotasaurus We’ll have that as well as any affiliate links down below. [ Announcer ], Thanks Vessi Footwear for sponsoring today’s video. Vessi Footwear is known for being lightweight easy to Pack, comfortable and most importantly, water resistant., Designed to keep you moving. Vessi, released their new Everyday Move. Shoes. They’ve got enhanced breathability and added support, making the style perfect for the adventurous or those looking for something.
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If you enjoyed this video, make sure to check out our Model M Video, the Greatest Keyboard of All Time Reborn in which Linus stole my jacket and now I have it back. Screw you, man, .