Elektronika 68
Elektronika DD

© Sergei Frolov Elektronika 68

The calculators "Elektronika-DD" and "Elektroniks 68" are essentially the same machine, released by different factories with only slight cosmetic and mechanical variations. The principle of operation and all electronic and functional systems are identical.

© Sergei Frolov

Originally known only from this unidentified picture (at right), found by Sergei in an old Soviet book. For the longest time, the picture was all we had. Recently, however, Sergei noticed the similarity between this machine and the SHARP Compet 20, which he found on Rick Bensene's excellent site "The Old Calculators Web Museum".

Rick wrote... " I really enjoy seeing the interesting parallels between some of the old Soviet machines and the US & Japanese designs. The Soviets seemed to be very good at reverse engineering...as well as doing some interesting designs of their own.

"This unknown Soviet machine is very, very similar to a similar machine from Sharp, the Compet 20. Other than the extra cooling slots in the top cover, and minor variations in the keyboard layout, the machines seem virtually identical.

"I wonder if this old Soviet machine was a 'copy' of the Compet 10. The Compet 10 was visually very similar to the Compet 20, but slightly earlier. The CS-10A (Compet 10) was Sharp's first all-transistor calculator. The Compet 10 was a fixed-decimal point machine. Since the picture on your site has apparent keys for fixed decimal point location, I tend to believe that it may be a 'clone' of the earlier Compet 10. The Compet 20 was a later follow-on that had full-floating decimal rather than fixed, but other than that difference, was very similar to the Compet 10. Regardless of what machine it was patterned after, the resemblance is definitely uncanny!

"Hope someone can find one of these Soviet machines 'in the flesh'. It'd be real interesting to compare the internals of the machines to see just how much of a clone the Soviet version is."

"Elektronika-68"

© Sergei Frolov Card from Elektronika 68

Recently, the above card, from an Elektronika-68 was discovered. It is likely that this card comes from the "Unknown" machine, and so in future we shall refer to this machine as the Elektronika-68. Now that we have some internals of the Elektronika (or at least, we think we do) - it will be interesting to see what the results of a comparison with the Compet machines actually tell us!

Similar Western Machines

Frank Boem writes "two days ago I purchased a FACIT 1122, which seems to have the same keyboard as the Elektronika 68; though it has the memory indicator left to "item 9" and only one indicator left to the display. I think, they simply moved them. Again, this is a machine created by Sharp, but I'm not sure about the model." Frank displays a similar machine, the Facit 1121 (OEM'd from Sharp?), on his web site ELEKTRON; a copy of his picture can be seen here below the Compet 20.

Specifications

Keyboard comparison

The pictures here show that, while not identical, the keyboards of these machines almost certainly share a common origin. Probably the Compet 10 machine was the basis for the design of the Elektronika.

Elektronika 68 / DD © Sergei Frolov

SHARP Compet 20 © Rick Bensene