https://www.walmart.com/ip/Texas-Instruments-TI-84-Plus-Graphing-Calculator-10-Digit-LCD/110883909

They were locked under glass so no one would steal them.
Texas Instruments was the most awesome one to have.
I think this little pink gem has more functions than any I bought in the olden days.

I beg your pardon. H-P was the most awesome one to have. Just having it hanging on your belt proved you knew Reverse Polish Notation (RPN to the incrowd) and were a force to be reckoned with. Parentheses were for wimps. :))

I found my old calculators recently.

My son couldn't understand that not only did I pay $80.00 for one. But at the then $2.00 an hour minimum wage I spent two weeks salary from my after school job of 20 hours a week.

Over two weeks salary if I'd pay tithing.

I remember getting my first HP when I was a Jr. at BYU. I had to take Quant and Qual Chemistry. All the other students had a calculator. I don't think I could have done well in that class if I had to do all those calculations by hand. It cost me $350.00 at the time which was quite expensive. As a student I didn't have money to burn. It was worth it.

My next one was a Texas Instrument which took me through my first job. I had a slide rule before computers, but I was not very good with it.

It was truly a game changer to have a calculator. When I think of all the tables I would reference, or having to hand calculate a square root, etc., I cringe at how much time it took and errors galore.

Thanks for the memories!

I grew up in Clear Lake (NASA) in the 60's and 70's. All the NASA guys has slide rules and pocket protectors. They landed Apollo 11 on the moon before calculators. I remember going back to Mission Control in 2004. My neighbor was running Johnson Space Center. He told me that my Blackberry had 10+ times the computing power that they did in 1969. Crazy.

Great recollection. What an incredible job they did.

That's when nerds were NERDS. They had pocket protectors, glasses repaired with tape, and what we called high water pants. I married the smartest one I could find!

They invented nerds. I was in high school and worked in an auto parts store on NASA Road 1. We hated weekends. We called the NASA engineers "moon pilots". They would come in and want an ignition condenser for a 68 Pontiac, V8. All GM 8 cylinder motors, from 64-73 took the same condenser, points, rotor and distributor cap. They'd want to know "how many micro-farads the condenser put out"Because they read the fine print in the service (not owner's) manual. Or, they'd want a temperature sending gauge (the sensor in the block that ran to the temp. gauge). But, they'd call it a "thermo-hydro transducer" You'd argue and tell them that it's simply a temp sending unit. Finally, I'd bring out two sending units (one AC Delco and one Standard Ignition brand). They look identical. I'd tell them that one , the Thermo-hydro transducer was 11 bucks and the temp sending unit was 3.25. They always bought the cheaper one. They'd bring calipers to measure replacement starters. Then state that the rebuilt starter was Three thousands of an inch wider (repainted). I'd tell them we have new starters for 70 dollars or the rebuild for 29.99. They always took the rebuild. Truly frustrating. Cool note, my friends Dad, Jack Byers, won a Snoopy Award from President Nixon. He was one of the engineers that brought Apollo 13 home-by a miracle. Good times.

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/John-Jack-Byers-9852869.php



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2020 10:19PM by stillanon.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Those were serious nerds right there!

I'm interested-if you married one, did you have to lay their clothes out so they didn't go to work with mismatched socks and plaid shirts and striped pants?

LOL. Yes. At first.

Eventually he rebelled and decided he had his own opinions. Imagine that.

Love the stories about the Clear Lake area, especially about the engineers and interactions at the auto parts store, LOL. I lived there for a few years in the late 90s and just off NASA Road one. Didn’t know any engineers there but nice area.

Inherited a Texas instruments calculator in late 80s from an older brother. Clearly had no idea how to use it, nor have I learned since (I was an English major in college—go figure.) But it had A really nice slipcover for it, suggesting it was expensive. I have no idea at the time but I’ve learned since they were pretty pricey.

Yeah it grew a lot. Ever been to the Seabrook Classic cafe on NASA Rd.1? How about the Turtle Club?

If you buy one that has been autographed by donald drumpf it is worth $10,000.00

In Seattle 1st ward, the financial clerk was a CPA; one sunday he didn't have his calculator & I happened to have mine...

I needed one bc DW & I were apartment managers on Queen Anne, I did the deposits of the tenant's rents...

He lightly cursed me because the numbers were small, easy to make a mistake...

early 70's...

My wife bought me my first one for Christmas 1973. Cost $80. Was AWESOME....at the time.

HP 41C. I still have it and play with it from time to time.

the 'cheap' 12 digit HP financial calculator is now $30.xx, a 12C 10 digit is now $54.xx on Amazon

My boss in real estate 70's soon had a 12C in the mid-70's, others were amazed at the speed of its functions.

How many remember those cutse up-side down messages??

80085

7734

And a whole lot I never knew.
https://www.neatorama.com/2013/09/15/Calculator-Words/

Yeah, now we only spend thousands (on cell phones ["calculators"]).

I still use my head.
[I've done a few numbers]

And it shows-
While it grows,
Like my knows,
As it blows!

I found a Casio fx-9750G PLUS at a used stuff store. I bought it for 6.50$.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Casio_fx-9750G_PLUS.jpg

It takes 4 AAA batteries.

From what I have read, Texas Instrument chips have not changed much from 1990 until now. They are overpriced because TI has a deal with some teacher association in the USA.

Ultimately, nothing beats a PC and a software like Mathematica and Maple V.

~~~~iceman9090

Ah, an anti-union bit of nonsense. How un-Canadian of you. :).

Teacher's unions don't buy calculators. School districts do, or more likely recommend what the students should buy. I know casio gets recommended a lot.

I used to work for TI way back in the day. We were jealous of HP. TI calculators had a problem with "key bounce", entering multiple keystrokes with a single touch of the key. This happened as the calculator aged. There are excellent key debouncers that can be added to the calculator, but that raises the price, and beside, a bouncy key will encourage buying a new calculator. Or pissing off your customers. I assume they fixed that problem somewhere along the line.

Fun fact: TI makes the clad metal used in US coins now.

A long time ago I taught a multiple session evening slide rule class at BYU. There was 6 foot long slide rule as a teaching aid. I was paid $40.
About a year later my research group paid $395 for an HP-35.

Worked at a company where all prospective projects had to meet a 7% IRR.

The worker B's just adjusted the facts to meet that number.

Lol. I had to do something similar once. I think it was the only time I ever used IRR. I tend to be skeptical of software simulations because there is a strong temptation to tweak the internal calculations and parameters to produce what the developer expects.

Which is why developers should never be the ones to test their own software. They only do reasonable stuff to test it. Turn the software over to a third grader. If they can't break it, it likely can't be broken. :)

In late 1973 (Sr year of high school), I bought a TI-99 for $100. All it could do was add, subtract, multiply, divide, 1/x, and SQRT.

In the spring of my first year of University, I bought an HP-55 for the ungodly sum of $450. I actually paid $300 for it as my SIL worked for HP and got a 33% discount. The -55 was the first calculator that was programmable, plus it had a timer. I used that continually until 1984, when it died. I still have it, but it does not work.

bought an HP-15C in 1984. I still have it too, but a couple of the keys quit working. Many years ago I found out that some guy in Germany had created an app for PC computers that was a clone of the 15C. I have it on my laptop. http://hp-15c.homepage.t-online.de It works perfectly.

I also found that HP created a iPhone app that is also an exact clone of the 15C. Available in the Apple App Store. HP made you buy it, but I paid the price. I have that on my iPhone and iPad.

I also still have the Pickett slide rule that my dad gave me when I was about 15 years old, just starting HS. I cost a TOM of $$$ in the day. I still treasure that too.

Cool.

Pfft.

I still have my Pickett N4ES vector log log dual base exponential speed rule SLIDE RULE.

The early personal computers were expensive as well. I think my brother paid more than $3K for his 2nd-generation 486, which I eventually inherited. I think that was the computer that got me started on my graduate studies. The early versions of MS Word used to make me cry in frustration.

My father was an engineer, and I had his slide rule for a long time. I eventually gave it as a memento to my brother, who was also trained as an engineer. I think my dad would have loved all of the technology that has been developed over the years.

When I was in 7th grade, 72-73, my friend bought a 4 function calculator for $40. That was a lot of money back then, let alone for a 12 year old. I remember thinking it was really cool, but we weren't allowed to use them in school, so I wondered what the point was.

Keuffel of Keuffel and Esser slide rules, was from Salt Lake, or at least spent his adult life here. Lived in Holladay. I still have a slide rule. And I've mentioned before my mechanical calculator, an Original Odhner. Serious geek cred. :)

Logarithms

Remember them? You have to be of a certain age to have used them. They were an amazing development back in the early 1600s. They could be used to convert multiplication into addition, and exponents and roots into multiply and divides. They were spectacular labor-saving devices, and math books routinely had logarithm tables in the back.

logs base 2 still show up a fair amount in computer science, and natural logs crop up a lot in calculus and especially differential equations, but logs for general users just evaporated with calculators. All calculators do multiply and divide, and a halfway decent scientific calculator will do arbitrary roots and exponents as well. And they will calculate logs, in the rare event that you actually need that.

CRC had a book of Standard Math Tables, with trig functions, logs, and various other tables. It sold through many editions over many decades. I think it still exists, but is now a cheat-sheet of math facts and formulas. Tables are now pointless. A calculator can calculate a value from scratch in a fraction of a second.

Log tables went the way of slide rules. They were, in fact, pretty closely related. RIP



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2020 11:10AM by Brother Of Jerry.

Yes! Log tables. I had a school folder that had log tables printed on it for easy reference. I kept my math papers in the folder. It also had a list of common formulas. There was no Google for stuff and books were heavy.

He had won the calculator along with a significant cash award as part of a national science teacher award back in the early 1980s.

I wound up being the first beneficiary of the scholarship he created with the money for local science students to attend science camps. With my award, I went to Case Western Reserve University for their Summer Science Symposium.

I'm not sure under what rubric he gave me the calculator, but I had it from 9th grade through my sophomore year in college when the screen got broken when I left it in my bookbag outside a chemistry lab. :(

Tyson