Texas Instruments TI-50

The TI-50 was the first US-built slimline scientifical calculator from Texas Instruments. It used a low-power CMOS integrated circuit manufactured by TI instead the Toshiba circuit in the previous TI-25. Another big advantage of the TI design was the great AOS system with up to 3 pending operations within 15 parantheses.

Manufacturing cost of the slimline models was not too high, the whole calculator uses one flexible printed circuit board (Flex-PCB) with the integrated circuit and a LCD-module. You won't find any soldering or usage of screws within the calculator. 

If you are interested in the calculating accuracy of scientific calculators don't miss the Calculator forensics.

The keyboard is similar to the SR-40 or TI-1200 designs and they suffer all from the same problem of bouncing.

Simply by comparing the designation of the integrated circuits of the calculators you'll get the first members of the slimline family:

In 1984 the era of the slimline calculators was over and Texas Instruments introduced a family of three calculators manufactured in Taiwan:

The TI-50 was introduced together with a dozen other products by Texas Instruments at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show, June 11-14. Don't miss the original press release.

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.

© Joerg Woerner, December 5, 2001. No reprints without written permission.