Article announcing calculator development agreement by which Computer Design Corporation (CDC) would develop advanced Large Scale MOS electronic calculators for Nippon Calculating Machine Company's newly-formed US-based affiliate, Busicom USA. Prior to the formation of Busicom USA, NCM's calculators, most of which were designed by Wyle Laboratories, from which Computer Design Corporation was spawned, NCM's calculators were marketed under the Busicom brand name in Asia and Europe.

This agreement never resulted in any advanced calculator designed by CDC being marketed by NCM/Busicom, for reasons that are a bit on the shady side.

The agreement was canceled by Computer Design Corp. about 20 months after it was forged. CDC publicly claimed that they canceled the agreement in order to focus on marketing their own calculators using their advanced, AMI-fabricated chip set (designated the "HTL" chip set, consisting of nineteen different chips), through its recently-formed Compucorp division.

The Compucorp calculators, which were also marketed by Monroe(USA), Sumlock(UK), and Deitzgen(USA) through OEM agreements, were tremendously powerful calculators that, through different firmware, could be customized for different disciplines (e.g., Scientific, Statistical, Financial, Surveying), as well as providing optional learn-mode programming, and peripheral interfacing functions. The resulting Intel-based calculator marketed by NCM/Busicom, using Intel's "computer on a chip", the Busicom 141-PF, was a basic printing office electronic calculator that, while using revolutionary technology, offered nothing particularly advanced in terms of capabilities or features.

The claim that Computer Design Corporation canceled the agreement was purely a face-saving claim. The real reason the agreement was canceled was that NCM flatly rejected the powerful Computer Design Corporation-designed 8-bit MOS-LSI micro-programmable chip set (developed as a result of this agreement), in favor of a comparatively less-powerful single-chip 4-bit "microprocessor" design from Intel. Computer Design Corporation was never aware that they were in a competition to develop the chip set for NCM, and developed the chip set based on the specifications provided by NCM. Intel's solution completely abandoned the specifications from NCM, and went down a completely different path. While the Intel design proved to be revolutionary, in reality, Computer Design Corporation's chip set more accurately met the specifications initially provided by NCM, though it required more chips than NCM had expected.

The reason why NCM chose Intel's design was because NCM received "behind-the-scenes" funding from a chief calculator executive at Sharp Corporation, who was a classmate of the President of NCM in college. The funding, personally provided out of his own pocket by this Sharp executive, was contingent upon NCM using Intel's design.

It's interesting to hypothesize what might have happened if the under-the-table funding of NCM, given with the condition that Intel's design be chosen for the new calculator, had not occurred. Perhaps the phrase "Intel Inside" may have ended up being "Computer Design Corp. inside".