Digitron – a wonder from a small Istrian town

Many peoplefrom the former Yugoslavia may not be aware that the first European electronic pocket calculator was produced in this country. It was the calculator by the Digitron company from the Istrian town of Buje, known as the Digitron DB 800.

With a visionary commitment to electronics, director Ante Tomljanović and 24 employees managed to turn an abandoned fire station into a factory, producing and introducing the calculator to the world in 1971, shortly after the Americans and Japanese had presented their models. After that, Buje became known worldwide, and the name of the company, Digitron, in Yugoslavia became synonymous with “pocket calculators.”

The model was the DB 800, a perfect blend of design and functionality, a compact device capable of performing complex mathematical functions and displaying the results on an LED screen within seconds.

The first pocket calculator was produced by the American company Texas Instruments in 1967, but it printed the results on a strip of paper. The Japanese Sanyo introduced the ICC-0081 Mini Calculator in 1970, which displayed numbers on a lighted display, but its dimensions were closer to a briefcase than a pocket.