History and Curiosity

Canon

Canon was founded in 1933 in Tokyo by Goro Yoshida, a passionate camera-lover, and his brother-in-law, Saburo Uchida. Their aim was to make cameras that could compete with the German models that were considered the most advanced of the day. More than 25 years later Canon developed the Synchroreader, a completely new magnetic recording-playback system and a recording medium based on a magnetic surface and head. Even before its release, it won strong recognition as a new media system permitting printed matter to be read while listening to played-back sound. 
In 1962, Canon seriously considered entering the business machines market. The electrical engineers who had been working on the development of the Synchroreader were casting around for a new field, and a plan emerged to apply computer technology to the electro-mechanical calculators around at the time. The development took two years and in 1964 the prototype received a very positive reception at a business show and was eventually launched as the Canola 130. Compared with full-key products launched around the same time, the Canola 130 was easy to use and proved very popular. Unfortunately, Sharp, which exhibited at the same business show, launched a 10-key product immediately after the show. Canon took time to launch its product, and thus forfeited the honor of marketing the world's first desktop calculator. Few years later Canon Inc. developed the famous Pocketronic based on TI's Cal-Tech project and their patents.

with permission of the author     www.datamath.org