The office of a securities firm in Tokyo on a winter afternoon, between dark wooden desks a pale green enamelled steel desk one metre long on four small castors, its right-hand flap swung open on rows of small black relays and a dense tangle of blue-green wires, on the desk top a sloping grey-brown console with a long narrow strip of small square dark glass lamp windows set flush in one row, and a field of cream keys in a pale blue frame, every key plain, smooth and unmarked, a hand in a white shirt cuff resting on the keys, window light from the left.
What it was used for
The 14-A by Kashio Seisakujo was a relay calculator in desk form. The Computer Museum of the Information Processing Society of Japan writes that it was installed at government offices, securities companies and the general affairs departments of ordinary companies; other relay machines stood in air-conditioned rooms, whereas Casio saw its use in ordinary offices and built the machine to be reliable and dustproof. It was sold solely through the office supply dealer Uchida Yoko; according to Casio's own account, Uchida Yoko customers from government offices and large corporations came to the launch event at the Sankei Kaikan in Tokyo in November 1957. Multiplication and division took 5 to 6 seconds against about 10 on geared machines. The successor 14-B of 1959 was, according to the IPSJ, adopted in large numbers by universities and research organizations.
What was new
Two things were characteristic in its operation: 10 numeral keys instead of the full keyboard with a column of keys per digit place, and a single 14-digit display window in which the answer erased the number entered, where most electric calculators of the time showed arguments and answer in separate windows. The ten-key pad itself was no novelty in 1957 - the Smithsonian lists a Dalton adding machine of 1913 as a "ten-key printing manual adding machine"; Olivetti's printing four-function Divisumma 14, built from 1948, also had a ten-key keyboard. Casio calls the 14-A "the world's first compact all-electric calculator", while the IPSJ says more cautiously "the first commercial relay-based calculator". Electronic it was not: relays are electromechanical.
What the sources leave open: The relay count varies: 341 on Casio's history page, 342 on the collector site casio-calculator.com. The IPSJ explains that the number of relays varied slightly through improvements, as did size and weight - 120 kg from the 1958 catalogue at the IPSJ, 140 kg at casio-calculator.com. The price of 485,000 yen is explicitly from the 1958 catalogue. No named user is documented.