This gave them the Flexowriter teleprinter, an electric typewriter capable of being used as part of unit record equipment developed in World War II for the Department of the Navy to automatically type "regret to inform you" letters to the survivors of fallen servicemen, the predecessor to modern computers.

Friden introduced the first fully transistorized desktop electronic calculator, the model EC-130 in June 1963, designed by Robert "Bob" Appleby Ragen.

The Singer – Friden Research Center in Oakland, California, later moved to Palo Alto, California (1965 to 1970), was unable to develop a pocket-sized calculator to compete with the corresponding new Japanese products, such as the Busicom, based on Intel 4004 in 1971, Casio Mini and Sharp EL-805 in 1972.

An early Friden electromechanical calculator is shown operating in closeup in the 1949 British film The Small Back Room.

Friden calculators, with their hypnotic mechanical movements, populate the hundreds of desks in the office of the imaginary "Consolidated Life" insurance company in the 1960 motion picture The Apartment.