Texas Instruments - Dataman educational calculator

Dataman was an educational toy calculator with mathematical games to aid in learning arithmetic. It had an 8-digit

vacuum fluorescent display A vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) is a display device once commonly used on consumer electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens. A VFD operates on the principle of cathodoluminescence, roughly s ...

(VFD) and a keypad. Dataman was manufactured by

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

and was launched on 5 June 1977.

Details

DataMan was designed to resemble a

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. It had an array of 24 keys of differing shape, including ten digit keys, four

arithmetic Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th ...

function keys, an equals key, a memory bank key, an on key, an off key, and keys for various games. The following games, played against the clock, were designed to teach the four basic operations of arithmetic—

addition Addition (usually signified by the Plus and minus signs#Plus sign, plus symbol ) is one of the four basic Operation (mathematics), operations of arithmetic, the other three being subtraction, multiplication and Division (mathematics), division. ...

subtraction Subtraction is an arithmetic operation that represents the operation of removing objects from a collection. Subtraction is signified by the minus sign, . For example, in the adjacent picture, there are peaches—meaning 5 peaches with 2 taken ...

multiplication Multiplication (often denoted by the cross symbol , by the mid-line dot operator , by juxtaposition, or, on computers, by an asterisk ) is one of the four elementary mathematical operations of arithmetic, with the other ones being additi ...

and

division Division or divider may refer to: Mathematics *Division (mathematics), the inverse of multiplication *Division algorithm, a method for computing the result of mathematical division Military *Division (military), a formation typically consisting ...

: *"Electro Flash" – for practicing mathematical tables *"Wipe Out" – for competing at solving arithmetic problems rapidly *"Number Guesser" – for guessing a number selected by DataMan *"Force Out" – for subtracting numbers, to avoid being the one who arrives at zero *" – to enter unknowns in equations Notably, the Dataman was powered by a single 9V battery with no voltage stepping to the main IC. This meant that you could hear the inner workings of the main IC when listening closely to the unit. The Dataman is based on a chip similar to the

Texas Instruments TMS1100 The TMS1100 is a family of microcontrollers introduced by Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrate ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dataman Educational toys Texas Instruments hardware Texas Instruments calculators Electronic toys