Permanent magnets do not need a power source, but this means that we can also turn electromagnets on and off, which is pretty cool when you think about it.
You can't change the north and south poles on these magnets, but as we now know, for electromagnets, we can change these poles by changing the direction of the electrical current.
So, if we have an electromagnet with a north and south pole that looks like this and a current flowing in this direction, well, we can change the poles and the direction of the current.
The Casio brothers decided to build their Casio calculators off a device called a " solenoid." So, a solenoid is basically a metal sort of plunger inside an electromagnet, so just a coil of wire that runs round it.