Carl Friden (April 11, 1891 – April 29, 1945) was a Swedish born American mechanical engineer and businessman who founded the Friden Calculating Machine Company (Friden, Inc.) in San Leandro, California in 1934. Prior to founding his own company, Friden had been a chief designer for the Marchant Calculating Machine Co. of Oakland His machines were robust and quickly became popular.

TIME Magazine is not inclined to pass out extravagant praise, but in 1943 it took a long look at inventor Carl Friden, in San Leandro, California and then hailed his "Brobdingnagian mental efforts involved in inventing a clerkproof, 5,500-part machine that adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides with the flick of a finger."

Brobdingnag was an imaginary country described in Swift's "Gulliver's Travels." Everything there was on a fabulously enormous scale, and TIME obviously felt that Friden's work in the calculating machine field was of the same stature. Pointing out that Friden had twice invented such a machine, the magazine stated:

"Friden's second model was further complicated by the fact that he could not infringe on the still-valid patents on his first one. He had to outwit himself."

The above quotation is from the following website
http://www.rauck.net/fridenII/index.htm

Our model is an H8 with serial No: 52464 and dates from 1942.

This was very kindly donated by Andrew Thompson of the USA.

Manufacturer:
Date: 1942

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH2340. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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