|
"I was just browsing MOSCOW... and saw the TORAL K-764. A blast from the past!
I remember using this "underpowered monster" in the late 70s -- always squeaky, buttons never working reliably, huge appetite for batteries (or, maybe Polish batteries were not too good then...) There were also other versions, geared towards scientific calculations.
Anyway, TORAL was the name of the manufacturer. It is an abbreviation, but I forgot what it used to stand for.
CEMI is the name of the semiconductor manufaturer located in Warsaw. It stood for "Centrum Elektroniki ....." -- I do not quite recall. The "K" in "K-764" stands, of course, for "kalkulator" i.e. calculator in Polish.
Incidentally, there is a bizarre piece of trivia about CEMI... It was meant to be, like many other things of the communist era, a showcase of Polish industrial might (semiconductor, in this case). It was, of course only fitting, that such a showcase would be built near the capital, so the dignitaries would not have to trouble themselves with long trips to some far away places when showing off to other visiting dignitaries. So, the edict was to build it almost in the center of Warsaw.
Indeed, the visits were quite frequent and there was a lot of hoopla for a while. Then, it turned out that there were certain, shall we say, "physical limitations" of the location. Never mind clean air and other "small" things required for a successful semiconductor fab... The rumble from the nearby tram (street-car) line was so enormous, that it was impossible to keep the IC masks still for exposure. So, prior to exposure, employees would be looking thru the window, watching for gaps in street traffic and yell "Do it!" when the coast was clear.
Wouldn't you like to see that, huh?
How do I know all this? It was widely known when I was a EE student in Poland in the late 70's. My masters project involved testing semicondutor devices. The samples were obtained from -- you guessed it! -- CEMI.
" |
