Old Calculator Museum Advertising & Documentation Archive
Sharp Compet 20 (Model CS-20A)
Advertisement for the Hayakawa Electric Sharp Compet 20 (Model CS-20A)
Circa 1966
The Sharp Compet 20
was Hayakawa Electric's (later renamed to Sharp Corp.) second electronic
calculator, introduced in Japan in the fall of 1965. The Compet 20 was
the first calculator made by Hayakawa Electric Co, Ltd. that
was designed to be exported for sale outside of Japan, with Australia
being the first country that imported the machine. By the early spring
of 1966, the Compet 20 was being directly exported to the US and proved to be
an extremely strong seller amidst a small group of American and
European manufacturers in the rapidly-growing world-wide electronic
calculator marketplace.
The Compet 20 is a four-function calculator with fourteen digits of capacity,
automatic or fixed decimal point, and negative number capability. The
calculator is made from a mix of discrete Silicon (new for Sharp) and
Germanium transistors, manufactured mainly by Hitachi in Japan. It is built
upon a digit parallel design, with math operations performed a digit at a
time. Digits are stored as four-bit binary-coded decimal numbers in
transistorized shift registers.
