* Back to Offline Hours

Have a mechanical calculator stored somewhere, and want to get rid of it? Send it to me!

This machine was manufactured by FACIT in Sweden, in 1948 (see here). It was the first calculator I bought in an online auction site, in November 2010. It was in pretty bad shape, including a bright green painting and missing screws in the cover. Worse than that, the previous owner's attempts at painting the exterior have resulted in mostly erased number wheels. Unfortunately, I couldn't see that in the site's photos.

I partially disassembled the machine, cleaning everything I dared removing, using John Wolff's instructions for the Facit C1-13, a much later model. I was able to fully disassemble the registers, and in the process I printed new numbers for the wheels. I designed and printed a thin strip of paper in a laser printer, cut each strip to size and glued each of them to a wheel. I also restored the plastic windows with acetate, and had the main levers and indicators re-chrome plated. Finally, the casing was repainted with the appropriate color, the Facit label was restored, and new screws were used externally – all coming from savings and scraps of old desktop PC cases.

I have no pictures of the partially disassembled machine, since this was my first one and I was unsure as to being able to put it back together, let alone in working condition. But here go some pictures of the final result.

1948 FACIT TK s/n 175713

Photos: under construction