Rockwell 310A

When my Olympia CD-520 calculator finally expired, I had a replacement ready to go: a late ’70s Rockwell 310A. Even without an on-line reference to vouch for its date of manufacture, one might have a good guess based on its brown and orange colour-scheme. It’s too bad the display is a green VFD one: orange Panaplex numerals would have been the perfect match.

In terms of functionality, this newer unit offers a small step up over the Olympia, having a floating point option and a ‘%’ key. On the underside of the calculator one sees it was an offering of Rockwell International’s ‘Microelectronic Product Division’, who were based in Anaheim, CA – and that it was Made in Japan.