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Busicom 207 / 207P Desktop Calculator


NCM/Busicom 207
Image Courtesy Peter Broughton

The Busicom 207 was the follow-on to the Wyle Laboratories-designed Busicom 202 calculator. Wyle Laboratories designed the 202, 207, and 2017 calculators under contract to Nippon Calculating Machine Co. (Busicom). The Wyle-designed higher-end calculators complimented NCM's in-house designed "basic" desktop electronic calculators. See the Old Calculator Web Museum essay entitled "The History of Compucorp" for more information on Wyle Laboratories and the relationship with NCM/Busicom. The 207 provides seven accumulator-type memory registers to allow for more complex math operations than provided by the 202. The 207 (and the 207P, which has provisions for an external printer to document calculations). were introduced in February of 1969, at the same time as the 2017, an identical machine with ten more memory registers. The 207 uses small and medium-scale integrated circuit logic, with a magnetostrictive delay line for main register storage. Like the 202 (and it's Wyle Laboratories marketed WS-02 predecessor), the 207 uses CRT display that shows the status of the three working registers, and two of the memory registers. The calculator has a capacity of 20 digits, and provides programmability in the form of a bi-directional punched card reader, with standard IBM-sized punched cards which can be taped together end-to-end to allow for essentially unlimited program size.