Ryōichi Yazu

He attended primary and middle school in his home village of Iwaya and the city of Buzen.

Two years later he brought the thesis and a model of his calculator on a visit to the novelist and army physician Mori Ōgai.

[1] Impressed, Ōgai wrote recommendations that led to a special research position at the Tokyo Imperial College of Engineering, where he worked on the design of a propeller-driven airplane.

A special feature was that it accepted input in the biquinary number system familiar to users of the soroban (Japanese abacus).

The calculator was expensive, costing 250 yen, more than ten times the monthly salary of a newspaper reporter or lower-level government official.