Friden
| Friden, Inc. | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Inc. |
| founding | 1934 |
| resolution | 1972 |
| Reason for dissolution | Takeover by Singer |
| Seat |
San Leandro , California , United States
|
| Branch | Office technology |
Friden, Inc. was an American manufacturer of typewriters and adding machines .
The Friden Calculating Machine Company was founded in January 1934 by the Swedish-born inventor Carl Friden. The company's first product was an electromechanical calculating machine that had been developed by Carl Friden and immediately enjoyed commercial success. During the war production during the Second World War, among other things, flight instruments and detonators for high-explosive bombs were made. The company's founder, Carl Friden, died of cancer in 1945 at the age of 54.
In 1956, Friden took over Rochester- based Commercial Controls Corporation , a manufacturer of typewriters . Under the name Friden Flexowriter, a punched card-controlled typewriter was sold , which was suitable for the automated creation of a large number of identical fonts. Among the users were the US armed forces, which used the machine to automatically generate notifications for the relatives of fallen soldiers.
The company achieved a breakthrough in the development of fully electronic calculating machines in 1963 when a Model 130 calculating machine was introduced. Fully electronic calculating machines had been available since 1962, but they still used impractical electron tubes , while the Friden 130 was the first to use transistors exclusively . The Friden 130 used the reverse Polish notation and had a memory consisting of a magnetostrictive delay line . The model 132, which was introduced in 1965, was based on the Friden 130, but it also had a function that could calculate the square root of a number.
Friden had been a subsidiary of the sewing machine manufacturer Singer since 1963 , who used the brand name until 1972.
Web links
- rauck.net , fan website for Carl Friden and his company
- vimeo.com , Vimeo video on how a Friden Flexowriter works
- youtube.com , YouTube video on building a Friden 132 with Clifford Stoll (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ rauck.net: The Birth of an Invention and Its Development into Big Business , accessed on February 27, 2019
- ↑ vintagecalculators.com: Friden EC-130 & EC-132 , accessed on February 27, 2019
- ^ Democrat & Chronicle: Jim Memmott: Rochester company switched from meters to munitions during WWII , accessed February 27, 2019
- ↑ Jack Buckman: Unraveling the threads (ISBN 978-1-4575-4661-7, excerpt) , accessed February 27, 2019