In 1964, Nixdorf developed the electronics for a desk-top calculator produced by office equipment manufacturer Wanderer, later building the components itself under licence.
The “Wanderer Conti” was presented to the public for the first time in 1965 at the Hanover Trade Fair. It was the world’s first fully electronic desk-top calculator with printing output. In terms of design, the four-species calculator was a bona fide computer, boasting an arithmetic unit, a magnetic core memory, a printer and a threaded read-only memory (ROM).
The Conti enabled Nixdorf to gain a foothold in the US market when the Chicago-based Victor Comptometer Corporation placed an order worth DM 100 million for the machine in 1968. Photo: Jan Braun, HNF
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