Hugle International Hugle-8

Hugle International was founded by husband and wife team William B. and Frances B. Hugle in 1966, originally to manufacture equipment involved in the fabrication of integrated circuits. At the time, many IC manufacturers built their own equipment to manufacture their ICs, utilizing their own in-house knowledge to put together machines purpose-built to suit their own needs. The Hugles believed that there could be a lucrative business in engineering, manufacturing, and selling generalized equipment for fabricating integrated circuits. The thought proved correct, and the company grew quickly and profitably.

Sadly, Frances Hugle passed away in 1968 at the age of only 40. Frances had invented many of the concepts behind the IC fabrication equipment that the company manufactured, being the only woman scientist involved in the nacent field of integrated circuit manufacturing at the time Hugle International was founded. Her husband, William, carried on with the business after Frances passed away, though much of the innovation that surrounded the company's unique equipment had been devised by his wife through years of research and development in the field of integrated circuits.

It appears that for a period of time beginning sometime in 1972, Hugle International ventured into the low-cost electronic calculator business. The Hugle-8 was the company's first entry into the marketplace, with apparently at least one or two other machines subsequently being sold under the Hugle International brand. It appears that the company's calculator business did not prove to be successful as was the case with quite a number of flash-in-the-pan calculator companies that came into existence in the early 1970's once commodity calculator chips began to become available. Hugle International was apparently forced into liquidation in the fall of 1975 due to regulatory agency pressures as a result of some stock transaction irregularities.

The Hugle-8 calculator is a very basic eight-digit, floating decimal point, four-function AC powered desktop electronic calculator with a switch-selectable constant mode for multiplication and division. The machine uses a single-chip calculator IC manufactured by Nortec Electronics, and a planar gas-discharge seven-segment display. The machine uses a single-chip calculator IC designed and manufactured by Nortec Electronics, the Nortec 4204.

If you have a Hugle-8 calculator, or any other calculator that was sold under the Hugle International brand, please contact the museum by clicking on the EMail button in the menu-bar at the top of this page.