Wyle Laboratories, a company specializing in aerospace testing equipment, entered the calculator market in April 1964. The firm debuted its Wyle Scientific WS-01 model at the Spring Joint Computer Conference in Washington. The project originated from the acquisition of Ransom Research in 1961, which had been developing a prototype electronic calculator.
The WS-01 was priced at $3,950 and weighed approximately 22 kg. It featured a unique 8-inch cathode-ray tube (CRT) display that simultaneously showed six registers, each holding 24-digit decimal numbers. The device utilized gated sine/cosine waveforms to generate digits on the screen, creating a distinct, fluid appearance.
The calculator lacked a floating-point system, instead using a manual switch to set the decimal point at one of seven fixed positions. It provided advanced editing capabilities, including a cursor for replacing digits and shift functions for adjusting numbers within registers. The machine was built using discrete germanium transistors and RTL logic.
Operational memory was managed via a small rotating magnetic disk, which stored approximately 1,700 bits of data. This architecture required the device to remain stationary during operation. The system supported complex operations like hardware-based square root extraction and allowed for simultaneous addressing of multiple registers during data entry.
