The article chronicles the ANITA Mk VII, an early electronic calculator developed by the Bell Punch Company and launched in 1961. The device represented a revolutionary shift from mechanical to electronic computing.
Bell Punch Company transitioned from manufacturing bus ticket punches to mechanical calculators before engineer Norbert Kitz proposed an electronic solution around 1956. ANITA stood for A New Inspiration To Arithmetic/Accounting. Development began in 1956, with prototypes appearing by 1958. The Mk VII became the first fully electronic desktop calculator, priced at approximately 355 British pounds.
The machine weighed 12.7 kg, measured 375x440x240 mm, and consumed 70 watts. It featured over 180 thyratron and trigger tubes and Dekatron counters, displaying 13 Nixie tube digits. The device operated at 4,000 clock pulses per second using decimal arithmetic rather than binary.
Users could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through keyboard input with instantaneous display updates. The article notes that multiplication occurred in under 0.035 seconds, while division required approximately one second.
The ANITA dominated the market for 2.5 years before transistor technology advanced, eventually replacing vacuum tube calculators in office environments.