17 May 2026

Zulfia's Calculator — Anushandhanee's Young Inventor

From a 1978 Dainik Barta clipping — Anushandhanee member Zulfia Zarrin, a 4th-grade student at PN Girls' School, who built a working calculator without spending a paisa.

“Their inventions will astonish not just Bangladesh — the whole world will look on in wonder.”

So began a Dainik Barta report on 1 October 1978, telling the story of one of Anushandhanee’s youngest members. Zulfia Zarrin — eight or nine years old, a 4th-grade student at PN Girls’ School in Rajshahi — had built a working calculator machine. And she had spent nothing to do it.

“Have you seen the calculator machines they have in big offices?” the reporter asked his readers. “The kind that adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides numbers as large as you like? Imagine if every one of you had one — you wouldn’t have to suffer through getting your ears pulled for an arithmetic mistake.”

Zulfia had built her calculator out of wood, paper, and other household scrap — without spending a single paisa. In the reporter’s own words: astonishing.

This story isn’t just about a young girl’s invention. It’s a reflection of Anushandhanee’s founding belief: inside every child is a young scientist, waiting only for the chance to be seen. Within a decade of its 1977 founding in Rajshahi, the organization had already shown that curiosity — not resources — is the real key to scientific inquiry.

Forty-nine years later, the spirit of young inventors like Zulfia is still what drives us.