Novus 4510 Mathematician

A friend gave me this National Semiconductor Novus 4510 Mathematician scientific calculator made in 1976, and I couldn’t resist taking it apart.

It is an interesting calculator, simply by being a Reverse Polish notation (RPN) machine.

On the inside, the hardware it’s pretty simple, with only two IC’s and a 9-digit 7-segment bubble LED display, mounted on a single side fiber glass PCB. The keyboard seems pretty robust and it’s fixed to the front part of the case, while the PCB it’s mounted on the back part of the case, connected through a flat flex cable.

IC1: MM5760N – 24 pin DIP, Slide Rule Processor
IC2: DS8864N – 22 pin DIP, Segment-Digit Parallel-Input Display Driver

novus-4510-pi

novus-4510-inside

novus-4510-back

Comments

  1. written by: Brian Railey on August 31, 2019 at 6:28 am - Reply

    i Had one new from national semiconductor back in 1976. there were rounding errors even then, so it isn’t because it is old.
    they and HP had RPN calculators, HP still does.

    • written by: Mihai on September 8, 2019 at 5:31 pm - Reply

      Thank you for the info Brian.

  2. written by: Philip Curran on October 29, 2019 at 1:05 pm - Reply

    I owned one of these towards the end of high school and at the beginning of university. I liked the quirkiness of RPN.

    • written by: Mihai on November 1, 2019 at 3:38 pm - Reply

      It’s funny to watch people looking for the equal (“=”) sign on this!

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