Died inventor of the first pocket calculator
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KIEV. March 6. UNN. Jerry Merriman, one of the inventors of the portable electronic calculator, has died at the age of 86 years. It is reported by UNN citing the Associated Press.
Merriman died on 27 February in a hospital in Dallas from complications of heart and kidney failure, said his stepdaughter Kim Ekovich. He was hospitalized in late December after complications during an operation to install a pacemaker.
He studied at the University of Texas, but never finished it. Instead, he went to work in the University’s Department of Oceanography and meteorology and soon found himself on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, measuring the force of hurricane winds. He began his career in Texas Instruments (TI) in 1963 at the age of 30 years.
In the first portable digital calculator that Jerry Merriman, together with Jack Kilby and James van Tassel of TI invented in December of 1966, used bipolar transistors and integrated circuits.
The first calculator was the semiconductor ENCORE, performing mathematical operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The output was on paper tape.
In the early 1970-ies TI released its first line of calculators.
Recall that the creation of artificial intelligence not inferior to that of their human capabilities, possibly by 2029. This opinion was expressed by the inventor, author, futurist ray Kurzweil during a speech at the 15th annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy (YES)