- [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.
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(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 wanna 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 wanna 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 gonna 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 wanna 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 gonna 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 wanna 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.
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- Thanks for watching everyone.
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.