Calculator - Inside Calculators

The early counting machines, items like the car's odometer, work with a set of gears and wheel. A certain number of wheels are divided in 10 equal parts on each of which one of the 10 digits appears. (Windows are placed on top of these wheels so that only one digit appears at a time.) These wheels are then attached to gears which as they turn rotate the wheel so that the digit being displayed changes. When the right most wheel changes from 9 to 0, a mechanism is set in motion which turns the wheel to the left one unit, so that the digit it displays changes. This is the carry sequence. When this second wheel changes from 9 to 0, it too has a mechanism to carry to the next left wheel.

Electronic calculators have the four major units van Neumann created: input, processing, memory, and output. The input unit accepts the numbers keyed in, or sent through the reader in the case of the punch card, by the operator. The processing unit performs the calculations. When the processing unit encounters a complex calculation, it uses the memory unit to store intermediary results or to locate arithmetic instructions. At the completion of the calculation, the final answer is sent to the output unit which informs the operator of the result; this may be through a display, paper, or a combination. Since the calculator thinks in binary, the output unit must convert the result into decimal units.