Tony wrote: > Didn't Singer own Friden (or at least the name) at one point? I am sure I've > seen calculators > batched(sic) 'Singer Friden').
Yup. In July of 1963, Singer announced its intent to purchase Friden. The deal closed in October. It was all a part of a larger diversification move on the part of Singer that began in the early 1960's. Friden employees in general were not at all happy about the acquisition, especially those in design and engineering. Fortunately, the Singer management was far away, and only made occasional visits. But, as is inevitable, the important Friden culture started to be eroded. Singer effectively began the death of internal electronic calculator development at Friden when it quietly started selling the transistorized Friden 1112 electronic calculator, which was made in Japan by Hitachi, purchased under a temporary OEM agreement between Singer and Hitachi. The 1112 was an experiment to see how well the machine sold. It did reasonably well, and that was enough for Singer to slowly begin to dismantle the Friden electronic calculator development operation, and start selling OEM-acquired (from Hitachi initially) calculators under the Singer/Friden badge. The Friden 1154 electronic printing programmable calculator was the last fully-Friden-designed & built electronic calculator developed. The later Friden 1155 was a design that was farmed out to an independent design/development company, which was told to re-use as much from the 1154 as possible. After that, all of the calculators were acquired under OEM agreements from other companies, and by that time, most of the brain trust that made Friden's wonderful and unusual electronic calculators had left. In the fall of 1975, Singer shuttered all Friden operations, ending the legacy of Friden.
