A 4.5 year search - found - Unisonic 766 - a beauty

[Gene]

This thread: Unisonic 766 pointed to a sadly no longer available catalog page in a TAS (ok, EBAY) auction with a Unisonic calculator I had never seen before.

As a side note, I of course love HP's and even have an extensive TI collection, but I have a special place for Commodore scientific calculators (the subject of a talk I will give at HHC 2017) and also Unisonic scientific calculators (perhaps HHC 2018?).

Why do I like Unisonics? I remember going to KMart with my mom and while she shopped, I wandered toward the watch counter as a 13 year old. That's where I discovered calculators and Unisonic was the brand they carried. It seemed every few weeks or so they had a new model on display with a new key. What did that do? Eventually, they had models with trig and I pressed them all with no idea of what it was doing. :-)

What I had never seen was this financial Unisonic calculator. Unisonic models almost all have the same industrial design. Brushed aluminum look, green display, white, blue, orange keys. Lovely.

In the thread above, eventually it was discovered that the model I was squinting at was the Unisonic 766. Functions are:

-- TL and Trend are a basic linear regression.
-- Sell, Cost, Margin are the basic selling / cost relationships.
-- Sum and bar-X are totals and average.
-- DP sets decimal place.
-- %, delta % and square root.
-- C clears the display, CA is clear all to clear ENT values.
-- n, PMT, PV, FV of course, I/YR is annual and i is periodic interest rate.

You enter values by keying value, pressing ENT and then the function key. So ENT is like a shift key.
You compute the value you want by entering the required values pressing COMP like a shift key for the function you are computing.
The AL / BUS switch at the top are for "algebraic" vs. "business" logic.
BUS, or Business here means 1 + 2 = shows 3 and then if you press 10 = it shows 13, then press 5 = and it shows 18, etc., aka like an adding machine.
AL or algebraic means 1 + 2 x 3 = shows 9, so there is no hierarchy, just not an adding machine.
It has an 8 digit display, no exponent.
Keys have no click, but they all work today.
Note the "odd" placement of the = key. :-)
Note the uneven printing of the 766 model number. Really? No quality control at all ? :-)

The approach used on this model to do financial functions is fairly common on lower end financial calculators dating to 1976-1977. I have several that use the ENT and COMP approach.

Anyway, four and a half years later, here it is:



And the back label. Funny it says it is powered by 3 x 1.5 V batteries, but it requires four! Note the low serial number!






The only item rarer than this in the Unisonic world is the ONLY model they made with hyperbolic trig, the 1499. I have the only one I have ever seen.

Good Unisonic scientifics to get include the 796, 799 (there are two versions of this one), 1099, 1299, and to a lesser extent, the 849.


So anyone else like Unisonics?

[d b]

I've only seen a couple of business models from that era. Yours is unique.
My favorite Unisonic is the SC90 though, for one obvious reason. The enter key works like one should ;-)

[Gene]

Ah, that's a Unitrex, not a Unisonic. Different company, I think. :-)

I agree the Enter key works properly, however!

[d b]

Yep. Different everything. I should get my readers on before I post.
Your's is reminiscent of a Magiclick (made in Argentina) that I bought off ebay with a bad photo. I saw the Enter key but couldn't make out much else and got all excited. No loss. It went to a calculator-loving and as they say on ebaby "smoke free home".
IIRC: it had the same switching and functions as yours so possibly the same ROM, but a different body/case. there were four Argentine and one Brazillian company that I know of who would buy the ROMs and displays but make most everything else on their own. The keys on the Microcifra 10 feel like an HP-91/92/97! They used the Novus Mathematician ROM so the overall accuracy is less than stellar, but usable.