INVENTION: Calculator's Calculations

Anyone who is baffled by mathematics beyond the multiplication tables can imagine with awe the Brobdingnagian mental efforts involved in inventing a clerkproof, 5,500-part machine that adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides with the flick of a finger. Last week a 52-year-old Swedish inventor named Carl M. Fridé celebrated the tenth anniversary of the second time he had invented such a machine. Moreover, although the principle of an accurate calculator is already 123 years old, Carl Fridén's second model was further complicated by the fact that he could not infringe on the still-valid...

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