IME (Industria Macchine Elettroniche) IME 86 S Desktop Programmable Calculator
IME was an Italian company based in Rome. They produced a line of early, yet very capable electronic calculators that were quite competitive in the calculator marketplace, especially in Europe, in the late part of the mid-1960's. Their initial machine, the IME-84, was quite sophisticated as first-generation transistorized calculators go, and the 86, a follow-on design, continued IME's tradition of excellence.
The IME-86 calculator was designed to be the centerpiece of a multi-component calculating system. The machine was designed with expansion capabilities in mind. A fairly wide range of options were available for the machine, including remote keyboard/display units (Model KB-6) which could connect to the main calculator through a "hub" that allows up to sixteen remote keyboard/display units to be connected, although only one unit at a time can access the calculator (unlike the Wang 300-series "SE"-model calculators, which could serve four simultaneous users). Also available were external printers, keyboard-only units, external core memory expansion units (MS-306), and programmer units, including the Model DG-308 and DG-408 "Digicorder" devices that transform the IME 86 into a learn-mode programmable calculator.
The IME 86 is an all-transistor (mostly Germanium PNP) machine, with Nixie tube display. Magnetic core memory provides working memory register storage. The machine carries out the basic four math functions along with automatic square root (which uses memory register four as a scratch register during the calculation). Four accumulator-style memory registers are provided, making the machine particularly useful for more complex operations involving multiple intermediate results. With a capacity of 16 digits, the machine provides plenty of capacity for financial or scientific calculating. The 86 is a fixed-decimal point machine, with two keys ".->" and "<-." which are used to set the decimal point position at any position.
