This FACOM 128B was designed in 1958 and built in 1959, and is part of Fujitsu’s (and Japan’s) first commercial computers series. It uses over 5,000 relays, and still works to this day! Samtec and Fujitsu arranged for me to see this very special machine in action during a recent visit to Japan.
Many thanks to Fujitsu:
Mayumi Funamura
Yoshio Takahashi
Tadao Hamada
and Samtec:
Yasuo Sasaki
for making the visit possible.
Special thanks to
Robert Woodhead
for providing precious technical information.
Some relevant links:
Outstanding CHM video on the early machines mentioned here: https://youtu.be/qundvme1Tik
Nice list of amateur relay computer projects: https://hackaday.io/project/11798-relay-based-projects
Viewer @aljawad solves the same problem on a HP-15C pocket calculator from 25 years later: https://youtu.be/dyL5CozJsZU
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