Production of Anita Now Well Established

While the Japanese have been receiving a lot of attention for their use of MOS technology in desk calculating machines and the prophets have been forecasting that they will swamp and dominate the world market, Sumlock Comptometer has built up its production of Anita calculators to the stage where, at latter part of last year, it passed its long-aimed target of producing several hundred calculators a week.

Now the parent company, Lamson Industries Ltd., has recognised the expansion of the Anita calculating business and has formed a new company, Sumlock Anita Electronics Ltd., to be responsible for the design, development and manufacture of all its calculators. Sumlock Comptometer's sister company. Bell Punch, previously responsible for this activity, will concentrate on the production of ticket issuing machines, tickets and totalisators.

It is interesting to look a little at the history and development of the calculator business within the company. Bell Punch was formed in 1878 with the express purpose of producing ticket issuing systems and preprinted tickets. From these fare-collection systems, it broadened into the entertainment side, with totalisator machines, and then into the whole totalisator public indication business. After this came taximeters.

All these are figure instruments and a request came from London Transport before the last war for a simple adding machine. Thus, Bell Punch found themselves in the calculator business but all the machines made were of mechanical design. It says much for such a company with absolutely no previous electronics experience that it launched the world's first electronic calculator in 1961. Though this did nothing the previous models could not do, it eliminated operating noise and removed the delay in obtaining answers. These first Anita electronic calculators contained cold-cathode trigger tubes and, with the number of moving parts greatly reduced, it was hoped to improve the reliability factor of the machine.

At first, the company experienced a fair bit of trouble with these trigger tubes and, along with this, it took the market some time to accept the electronic machine. After about two years, however, sales took off and the company has not looked back.

Next came the transistorised Anita machine and now the MOS IC Anita 1000 series, of which there are currently five models. The company claims to have just under 50 percent of the U.K. market, a market that is expanding. Sales are mainly in the U.K. but outlets do exist overseas through distributors. Any competitor is considered seriously, according to R. Walter, managing director of Sumlock Comptometer, and with the price of the machines becoming an increasingly important factor, it seems the company must expand its export activities to keep the volume of production high and so minimise unit costs.

Production of Anita machines has trebled in the last five years, with the greatest increase occurring last year when the 1000 series was launched. A big selling point is service and some 25 percent of its machines on the market are rented. In fact, this side of the business is increasing with the percentage having risen from 20 over the last year.

With 34 offices across the country, rapid servicing is possible by qualified engineers. But any such operation like this is expensive and so a drive to improve reliability has been conducted along with the technical development that has taken place.

The printed-circuit boards plugged into mother boards principle is now used with the result that the majority of servicing can be done on the spot. Installation and service engineers, though, have been used to handling much more complex problems as previous machines did not contain PC boards. This ability to tackle difficult situations and the factory watch on reliability, has meant that the company is now able to boast a service call rate of 1.045 calls per annum since the new IC range was announced.

Apart from following the normal trends of reducing the machine size, improving reliability and increasing the speed of operation, another aim has been to make life easier for the operator by minimising the amount of human decision making. The use of up to seven Marconi-Elliott custom-designed MOS ICs, each containing some 200 transistors, has allowed this greater operating flexibility

Each machine has some 25 'active' PC boards and a total of 31 in a complete unit. These boards, which have their contact areas palladium plated, are made by the company itself and are produced at a five-figure rate a week to a high-standard.

Some 550 people are employed in the company's Portsmouth factories. A lot of these are still to be seen assembling components on to boards and one imagines that, for future models of Anita, the aim will be to increase the complexity of the MOS ICs, thus reducing the amount of assembly work to be done and the number of joints made.

From the servicing point of view however, there is an optimum unit replacement cost and here the company must decide where this lies. In the long term further developments could mean having an Anita small enough to fit in your pocket.