New technologies seem to announce the inexorable end of the simple plastic calculator but, for now, Japan’s Casio continues to sell tens of millions every year and plans to gain ground both in stores and in schools.
Both smart phones and computers have built-in calculators, and everything indicates that artificial intelligence (AI) will have the skills of the best human mathematicians, a set of factors that could spell the end of the traditional calculator.
Will these devices end up in disuse, like the abacus, used for centuries in Asia and today practically disappeared?
Maybe one day, admits Tomoaki Sato, a manager at the Japanese group Casio, who reported an “undeniable” decline in personal calculators in companies.
And yet, Casio assures that in its last fiscal year – which closed in March of this year – it sold 39 million calculators general and scientific, in a hundred countries.
A figure lower than the 45 million calculators sold in 2019-2020 but still exceeding the 31 million in the 2020-2021 financial year, just after the covid-19 pandemic.
In fact, calculators are more affordable than computers and less fragile than smart phones, in addition to running on both batteries and solar energy. This makes them more reliable for schools, especially in developing countries, a sector with strong potential, according to Sato.
“Optimized” tools
This is also the case of small businesses, where calculators with large keys are hardly used anymore.
Thitinan Suntisubpool, co-owner of a bag and lucky kitty store in Bangkok’s Chinatown, says she loves how sturdy her calculator is, which she has dropped more than once.
“It is more practical in many ways,” the 58-year-old saleswoman tells AFP. “You can type and show the figures to the client,” which avoids misunderstandings due to language, he explains.
Near her shop, at a street stall, another woman sells lamps, watches and electronic devices. However, sales of calculators are rather “weak,” he laments.
“There is still demand for calculators,” insists Ryohei Saito, general manager of Casio’s Thai division. “Not everyone can access smart cell phone connectivity, and calculators are optimized toolsfocused on the necessary functions,” he points out.
At a Casio factory in Thailand, assembly line workers place green printed circuit boards and attach buttons to the frames of light blue calculators.
The Japanese group has come a long way since 1957, when it invented the “14-A”, an office model that Casio presents as the first all-electric compact calculator.
And long before that, models of calculating machines were already in use, such as the “Pascaline” designed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Recently, a copy of this device, from 1642, was to be auctioned at Christie’s but the operation was suspended due to the opposition that the sale aroused in France.
Great scores
Despite the dazzling advances in AI, mistakes are still common, and chatbots like ChatGPT sometimes get the most basic sums wrong. On the other hand, “calculators always give the correct answer.”says Tomoaki Sato, senior general manager of Casio’s education division.
Now, in the field of advanced mathematics, AI could be very effective: in July, AI models developed by the Americans Google and OpenAI achieved a score worthy of a champion of the International Mathematics Olympiad.
But none of those programs obtained the maximum mark in that contest, in which people under 20 years of age participate, while five human participants achieved it.
The president of the event, Gregor Dolinar, considers the advances of AI “fascinating.” In the past, scientific calculators “were indispensable, but today it is easier to ask AI”comments AFP.
“If the question is posed correctly, artificial intelligence can solve abstract and logical problems and show its reasoning,” adds the expert.
For Dolinar, an engineering professor at the University of Ljubljana, in Slovenia, physical calculators are destined to “progressively disappear.”
A phenomenon that he is already observing among his students: “they can calculate everything on the phone.”