Compet Neon Plasma Display Calc With A Special Surprise Inside! 

Given the amount of asbestos in this calculator it probably survived all of its users.

MetalBestos systems, may have been the chimney pipe manufacturer. They built pre-fabricated metal chimney sections for woodstoves. Basically a double wall stainless steel pipe, insulated with asbestos sealed between the two walls. Worked very well.

I think you're sufficiently qualified, Fran.

"If you like this video, I don't know why you do" Fran you just showed off one of the only calculators in the world that can kill you without even being plugged in, that's just good TV (or RU-vid I guess)

My test of vintage: Try to divide by 0. The result tends to indicate the sophistication of the ALU. Also, the inventory tag indicates that this was a capital asset in its day. Geezer fact for youth today.

I love those displays! My grandparents had a calculator that used them, and it brings back memories. I like how neatly routed the board is, even though it's obviously been traced by hand.

I've used that same Compet calculator at work decades ago when I worked at a place called Behnke Nurseries. They used these calculators outside because you were able to read the numbers. The numbers were so clear, even when you would get sunlight on them.

I still have the Rockwell calculator which I bought when I entered college in 1972 and it was a great calculator for it's time and I enjoyed it, but was told by one professor to leave it and my slide ruler at home. These items was new back then and people was still primarily using slide rulers to do their math with.

That's a really cool piece, just love the clack of the keys. Thanks Fran, for doing asbestos you can to bring great content. You're an inspiration.

Your Heathkit clock display looks so crisp and refined. The clever goo of the human alveolus efficiently accumulates the 'needle like surprise found inside' vintage houses and objects, especially when disturbed. Loyal workers and families discovered it all with horror.

I came for the special surprise.

My dad had 1966 Charger which had something called Electroluminescent Dash Lighting. It was the coolest green dash lighting ever. Would love to understand what thats all about. I enjoy your channel!

Didn't think I'd see a calculator teardown with any sort of danger value to it today!

I think the date code ("4K") on those HP3233Ps means December, 1974 (found a reference to one with 3L which meant November, 1973, so extrapolated from that).

With the ammount of asbestos in this thing and the way its inside that stuff must be in the air. I feel bad for the people at that factory :/. Thats even worse lol

you always find the most interesting devices to look at. really neat stuff Fran.

When i read the title i was like, Asbestos, in a calculator - No freaking way! - And then it appears that it comes from an asbestos factory - EEEK!

Mitsubishi calculator chip M58617-22B introduced 1974, used also in Sharp CS2106 which was produced starting 1975

Seeing the inside of this made me terrified for all the countless people who were exposed to asbestos in that plant. So much suffering due to negligence by the people who ran these types of facilities. My grandfather worked in an industry that was only tangentially related to asbestos and he recently passed due to mesothelioma.

think my dad a tv repairman who loved tech used one of these.. thanks for the memories..

When I was in elementary school back in the 60s we had huge asbestos curtains in the auditorium. We were told if there was ever a fire to wrap it around us to protect us from the fire, LOL. Then again they also taught us to duck and cover under our desks to protect us from exploding atomic bombs. That electronic calculator reminds me of the first one my Dad got in 69 or 70. The company he worked for provided it and he said it was like $280 and did add, subtract, multiply, divide and I think percent. In 76 I bought a scientific calc for college and it was $30. When I replaced it several years later the same calc was $9. LOL. Wise words on asbestos. Don't disturb it and you are fine.

Suggestion: Glovebox, compressed air, HEPA vacuum, a couple more videos. Fran doesn't need the details explained.

Calculators are an old tech item that retain their daily usefulness. Would love to have one of these.

In the 80’s I worked for an office equipment company as an electronics engineer. You wouldn’t believe the number of those and nixies as well as regular green vfd tubes we scrapped and threw in the skip. As a young engineer, 16, 17 years old, I saw no future for that tech. Now I’m mid 50’s I like tubes. Clocks and amps. Wish I’d got a set of in18 tubes before the prices went crazy

I've got one of those calculators, except mine came from an accounting firm. So I don't have added asbestos features. :)

TIL what asbestos looks like. TY Fran!

What a nice calculator, thanks for showing it to us, Fran! The case could use a nice retrobright, though...

Selkirk, formerly known as MetalBest or MetalBestos, chimneys are packed with one inch of premium fiber insulation, ensuring a 100% fill. The fill was probably asbestos but now it's something else.

Phenomenal presentation.

There's asbestos in the best of us.

For safety, simply use a vacuum with a filter for clean-up and place your toys behind a glass or plastic shield while you film. Asbestos isn't the only dangerous substance you are likely to encounter given the wide variety of old equipment you take apart. Maybe you could build a simple fume hood to quarantine your ancient artifacts during examination.

Yay! Asbestos! What a fun surprise!!!

I liked very much working with plasma discharge tubes. They were so convenient in bright or sunny environment, dimmable and very robust. I used to work with them on avionics for general aviation (e.g. silver/gold crowns series from King Bendix)... Also on professional display for air traffic controller simulators in a military training centre. Looooong time ago!...

Oh yeah, those Panaplex displays really are beautiful. I definitely agree they're better than nixies in pretty much every way.

Very nice!! I miss my old diesel powered Monroe calculator.....

Wow! Amazing to know info about asbestos in old gear ⚙️ cool video! 👍 also love ur message about standing up to messages about asking u out! Horrible people ur channel is so informative and am always learning alot with ur channel! 👩‍🔬 keep up the good work more informatice videos! Also loved ur video about radium in vintage clocks! 🕰

I'd have a mask or something on with all that asbestos. 😳

Try to avoid that asbestos... at least "asbestos" you can! LOL... sorry... stupid pun... couldn't resist. That's nasty stuff!

Awesome calculator! I have a Sharp SLSI S106 with similar neon!

I have a vintage Unisonic XL-1267 calculator/2 color print. It has a nice display inside.

come on fran your a good kid that has a good low key old tech channel, like the display well worth it

Look at how much got into that equipment then imagine how much ended up in the lungs of the people that worked there.

interesting video as always 👍😀 thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀

I don't think that they intended for "qualified service personnel" to mean qualified in hazmat disposal. That "goo" is probably cigarette tar, doing a wonderful job of capturing every little flake in the air. With that much asbestos in a relatively closed calculator like that, you can only imagine what the office air was like. And that's not even the top side, there's probably more that fell under the keys.

The Heathkit clock looks like the mission timer clock at KSC during the Apollo missions.

0:52 Oh! Nice Heathkit clock. Yeah, I like those displays, BUT the Nixies are still my favorite. I am curious if the older hand held portable video games they made in the early 80's used that type of display. 2:00 Yes! Please do! Ooof, the case could use some retro-brighting. The bottom of the case is nearly white! 3:38 Nice size linear power supply in there. NO switcher! I hate those things. 4:12 Ooof! Take that outside and give a good blow with an air hose! (Only kidding, that is probably a bad idea). I definitely see a lot of asbestos tumbleweeds in there. 6:01 Indeed! I was about to say the same thing. Those poly caps almost never go bad. I use them (albeit much larger) to recap old tube amplifiers. However, that light blue electrolytic might need to be replaced. I am impressed that it uses all discreet transistor drivers...probably another reason why it lasted so long. I tried to look the calculator up on Ebay just now, and sadly, I cant find one with a red display. There is a similar model, the cs -2108, but the display is blue.

I want a Heathkit clock now

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRAN!! (Sep 3rd)

I have the compet 224V, which has a panaplex display as well. It is my desk calculator for any non scientific calculations

That really is a very nice display. If it got in a calculator most likely in an office, it makes you wonder what happened to people there.

I got out of an Oven a timer with a backlit VFD, i mean that the back glass sheet is tranperant where the Types are.

Very nice to see!! (not the asbestos though). Last time I opened a device with an asbestos surprise, the plastic unexpectedly opened with a 'pop' as something broke and then... 'wait, is that... Ooohh SSHHXT IT's ON ME'!!! Without thinking twice I threw it out the window into the rain (safely away from people, of course). What upset me was the percussive 'pop' would have liberated the stuff and it might then keep giving the surprise gift.

Those displays are far more readable than Nixies.

Sleeving all those resistors !

Nice New Jersey Designed Calculator and Made in Japan..

Metalbestos currently is a brand of aluminum and steel smoke pipe for furnaces and fireplaces. I don’t know if that is the same company that owned that calculator.

Woooow this is amazing😍😍😍😍

Taking into consideration how much asbestos was inside that thing, I feel sorry for the poor bastard that had to operate that calculator. You know they didn't give a flying F about safety back then!

Have you ever seen a D5-100W display tube? I was going through my stuff and found it. Its a 1.5 inch CRT. I can only find one article about it online. Apparently it was produced by Telefunken specifically for Sinclair's first production miniature hand-held pocket television that was launched in 1977. All I have it just the CRT. It would be super cool if I had the little handheld TV that went with it.

I used to have a pocket calculator with a similar type of display.

I much prefer this display over the nixies as far as how it looks & usability :)

I have that same orange screwdriver. I think it's older than I am.

There are 'neon signs' that are adaptations of the panaplex display! [I know, I know.... panaplex used surface glow on the electrode, these are more like neon tubing in a box!] [The main similarity is a flat-package, self-contained glow discharge display] Glowing gas discharge is constrained by glass and ceramic elements to form pretty pictures. Three panels: top glass, 'art layer' and background. The 'art layer' and background are machinable ceramic, top glass is glass. The background is drilled for electrodes and filling ports, then bonded with frit* to the art layer. The art-layer is milled to create passages ( 3-8mm wide) from one electrode to the next, forming a discharge path. Rather than bending glass tubing to make letters, use a router! After cutting out the channels, the top glass is installed, bonded with a lower temperature frit than the first. After bonding, the panel is evacuated, back-filled with Neon. Often the top-glass had its own design elements that the glow enhanced. Some top-glass had fluorescent coatings to proved pastel colors! Being that these were cheap, mass-produced "OPEN" or "Miller Lite!" signs, nobody seemed to care about longevity, so no getters. It was quite rare to find custom designs in this type of signage! 10-15 kilo-volts, very low current. These were showing up about 15 years ago, but LED's in plastic covers took over that market. *Ground glass in a low-temperature glaze. Re-flow solder for glass!

The romans made quilts out of it used in certain group gatherings and would burn them afterward to clean them,, There is a roman poem that speaks of "Short is the life of the quilt weaver"

[ The useless information of the day ] The word asbestos is a Greek word literally written with English characters ( ασβεστος ) and ( in loosely translation ) means: "the one that never burns out", "the one that keeps burning forever" ! It is the a- in the beginning that means the exact opposite of the following word and the -sbestos from svistos that means burned out.

I have some panaplex displays that came from decomisioned machine at work. This machine had 10 positions and each position have one 4 digit, the deep ans sweet orange I never seen. And the lasted FOREVER, they barely needed to be replaed. Issue where with the driver chips. This display had two stacked boards, the digital, tipical 74s stuff and them the display driver that was all IC. I took some of them out the day before this machines went to the scrapyard Not sure now but I believe that I drived one for test with somewhere 130 -160 volts DC.

HA! Just in time for my pasta to get ready on the stove! Thanks for planing this, Fran haha! :D Some people take "no serviceable parts inside" as a challenge ... or so I've heard ... You better be cautious with the dust from that thing asbestos you can !!!

Hi Fran, you have to try to find yourself a Busicom 141PF calculator, there is a real surprise in it, the first Intel microprocessor 4004. I'm very curious if you can find one to open it.

Another good video. Been awhile since I watched one. Still cute as hell also.

Before watching this video, I would have assumed than any calculator formerly used at a company that manufactured products containing asbestos would have been far away from the manufacturing operations, perhaps even in another building, in a clean office, where it would have been used by someone in finance most likely. After seeing this video... well... I'm even more alarmed at the health risks to ANYONE even remotely connected to asbestos use! Just watching all those fibers being discovered inside that calculator made ME feel like I needed some kind of decontamination! Cool display on that calculator, though.

if there was that much asbestos inside the calculator imagine how much was in the operators lungs!!

Probably can still find tons of asbestos dust along the roadways or perhaps now washed away to somewhere else. Mankind has a funny way of figuring out everything a bit too late.

I'm sure Fran is sealing up the nasty stuff in that calculator asbestos she can.

Wow. And this was from an office!

A little asbestos never hurt anyo... *hack cough WEEEZE!*... anyone.

Hey Fran as a young and aspiring engineer you are a big inspiration!

Imagine the people who worked in that factory where this calculator was and how all that asbestos affected them. This was a calculator so it was likely in an office and not on the shop floor and it still accumulated that much asbestos in it. I really feel bad for everyone who worked in that building. Imagine giving your whole career to a place like that and your reward is a terrible lung disease.

Asbestos is nasty stuff. That's what took my grandmother in the end, simply from washing the asbestos laden overalls of my grandfather who worked in a shipyard. It didn't show up until her late 70s, by then it was too late.

I think UTSA (Univ. Texas at San Antonio) used to have a course, “CS2103”. “CS” - Computer Science (or maybe “Calculator Science”, in this case. 🙂) “2”-Sophomore-level course. “1”-1st of a series. “0”-normal lecture class (“1” would have been a lab), and “3”-3 hrs. credit for passing it. Of course, that was a long time ago (class of ‘97), but - who knows - maybe they still have CS2103? 😉

Do this As-Best-As you can :)

The calculator is dated on the serial number 1974 first month January, as first number is 4 and last number is 1

Metal & Abestos? I guess they had something to do with vehicle brakes. Either that, heating piping.

You have put your space suit on to fix that one! 👍

cool

John Wick killed 3 men with a pencil. This calculator is as dangerous as that pencil.

@ 4:05 I don't know. The traces are so hard to see. I think the map that someone put on the PCB is obscuring them. ;-)

You can tell that calc didn't come from California otherwise it would have been plastered with warnings;)

It's a calculator - but it's made from bamboo!

There's a little bit of asbestos in all of us.

Came to see the calculator, stayed for the asbestos!

Am I the only one who, for one fleeting moment, wondered if 7946130.00452 didn't actually mean something? If not only 71077345, or 5318008?

Oh dear. Put it in a bag, clean the desk and surrounding area thoroughly and toss the wipes. Oh, and where I'm from you can't just toss that stuff in the garbage. It's hazardous material, which means it has to be double wrapped and delivered to certain special places. Be careful!

Put a mask on Fran!

I lived in Africa in my early to late teens. Asbestos was used for roofing. I'll never forget kids playing around in the mounds of asbestos dust that you could always find on construction sites. Shudder.

I hope that's just office grade belly-button lint. Do be careful, Fran dear.

I think I have a calculator with similiar display

I suppose some people got the calculator with the accounting firm thrown in 2007/2008

Funky song 🕺🏽

Calculation: 6xHitachi + Mitsubishi = Sharp.

Do they make vacuum cleaners with HEPA filters?