Canon "Canola" Model SE-600, S/N 400058
Functions: ASMD, square root, 100 memories
Programming: 600 steps, subroutines, punched card entry
Technology: Bipolar DTL/TTL on 14 boards 11" x 5"
Display: 3 digit program counter, 16+5 digit printer
Dimensions: 19"W x 21"D x 7-1/2"H, weight 47 pounds
Manufactured: Canon, Japan, 1971
The Canola SE-600 programmable desk calculator was built by the Canon Company of Japan in mid-1971.
As a keyboard-driven desk calculator, it is little more than a simple 5-function machine (ASMD plus square root) with two memory registers. It has no numeric display - all entries, operations, and results are recorded on an internal dot-matrix printer.
As a programmable machine, its power comes from its ability to execute conditional branching and nested subroutines, and from its enormous (for the time) complement of one hundred memory registers, each capable of holding a 16-digit BCD number or 6 program steps.
Programming the SE-600 is carried out off-line by flowcharting and mnemonic coding, followed by hand-assembly into numeric opcodes and addresses, and manual transfer into BCD or binary form on pre-perforated IBM cards. Multiple programs or sub-routines can then be loaded into memory through the internal card reader and executed from the keyboard.
Although it has no inbuilt mathematical functions, the calculator was supplied with extensive subroutine libraries on punched cards. These included trig and hyperbolic functions in degrees and radians, Bessel functions, logs and exponentials, powers and roots, complex numbers, and coordinate transformations.
Additional program libraries for the SE-600 were developed and sold by third parties. This particular calculator was originally used in a surveyor's office, and has an extensive library of survey calculations on punched cards. The programs were developed by a firm of engineering consultants in Melbourne, "with the assistance of many surveyors throughout Australia".