Electronic handheld calculator invented

During the early 1960s, Pat Haggerty discussed the possibility of a handheld calculator with Jack Kilby on a business trip. There were other priorities, but in 1964, Dean Toombs, head of semiconductor R&D, formed a team consisting of Kilby, Jim Van Tassel, and Jerry Merryman to develop a calculator small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, yet powerful enough to perform basic math functions.

By December 1966, the team had a working model, and, within a year, Kilby, Van Tassel, and Merryman filed a patent application, which would be issued eight years later. The functional heart of the first miniature calculator was circuitry able to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. It had a small keyboard with 18 keys and a visual output that displayed up to 12 decimal digits.