Imagesource: Seiko Holdings Corporation

From time to time, we dedicate ourselves to calculating machines of a completely different kind. Surely, there will be no retro-retro articles about topics like a sliderule or an abacus in the near future, but something about the Curta might be conceivable. Let's see. 🧮

But to stay with electronics, and to broaden the horizon, we rummaged a bit, and came across the following pearl:

The Seike UC-2000 from 1984.

If any device was ahead of its time, it was this one. Basically more of a programmable wrist calculator, but with a docking station for programming, a 40-character display, and connectivity for the Apple-II, Commodore 64, and even IBM PCs, it was a milestone for wearables and mobile computing.

I don't recall Seiko having a real product hit with this one, they were just about 30 years too early with the release. 🤷‍♂️

The article by Riccardo Bianchini is already about a year old, but absolutely worth reading. And if you are interested in this topic, you can always find affordable full sets on ebay. ⌚️