Rare pair

[Chasfield]

Attached is a shot of two Anita scientific calculators from my collection. The the smaller one, with a red LED display, is a model 841, built around 1975. This is the last stretch of the original, high quality Sumlock Anita 811 pocket calculator hardware and it was made in England out of aluminium and other good stuff. The larger, green VFD equipped unit is a model 202/SR and was built very shortly after Anita's takeover by Rockwell international. It carries their logo in the top right-hand corner. It is functionally identical to the 841. Note the handy square-and-accumulate shifted function available on the decimal point key of both units. Production of the 202/SR was farmed out to Rockwell's Mexican facility, though Anita badging was retained for European marketing purposes.

The 40 years past relationship between Sumlock Anita and Rockwell somewhat resembles that which exists between Nokia and Microsoft today - acquire and mangle. Rockwell soon lost interest in calculators and wound down production, wiping the original Sumlock Anita operation off the UK map at the same time.