Within only a few years, the Swedish company Facit went from fantastic profits into being close to bankruptcy in the early 1970s.

The shift to electronics was the reason why Facit made those losses.

Facit’s CEO Gunnar Ericsson was now blamed for the problems at the company.

Should Facit be regarded as a failure?

My answer is NO.

There are three reasons for this:

1. All manufacturers of mechanical calculators got into trouble in this shift.

Monroe…

Victor…

Burroughs…

Remington Rand…

Olivetti…

Olympia…

Marchant…

2. Established firms in other industries have with few exceptions suffered greatly in technological shifts from mechanics to electronics.

Typewriters…

When watches became digital, about 1000 Swiss watch manufacturers went out of business in the 70s and 80s.

The music industry

The old radio industry

Kodak had to fire thousands and thousands of employees.

Many buildings in Rochester, NY, were blown into pieces.

In Munich, Germany, AgfaPhoto was demolished.

Konica left the industry after trying to survive through a merger with Minolta.

Polaroid is also resting in peace.

Hasselblad has been in deep trouble.

And so has Leica.

This can go on forever, I think the point is clear.

3. Once the calculator industry became digital, competition got fierce and ’the great calculator war’ broke out in the 1970s.

The calculators became cheaper, smaller and better at a violent pace...

New models were launched all the time…

In 1969-1972, more than 20 firms entered the industry…

Only a few years later, most of them had left the industry…

Only Sharp, Texas Instruments, Casio and a few others eventually survived…

Thus, if Facit would have survived the shift to electronics, it wasn’t exactly paradise that waited after the revolution...

Summing it up:

Facit can’t be regarded as a failure. All other mechanical calculator companies went down, and the same thing has happened in virtually every industry that has been digitized. Moreover, once the shift happened, competition became so fierce that many electronic companies had to leave the industry.

Photos taken at: Åtvidabergs Bruks och Facit Museum, Sweden http://brukskultur.atvidaberg.se/index2.html Åssa Industri och Bil Museum, Sweden http://www.assamuseet.se/ Thank You!

Image attributions

Christian Sandström