Slashdot Mirror
This is the Story of the 1970s Great Calculator Race (twitter.com)
An anonymous reader shares a thread [Editor's note: all links in the story will lead you to Twitter]: In the 1970s the cost -- and size -- of calculators tumbled. Business tools became toys; as a result prestige tech companies had to rapidly diversify into other products -- or die! This is the story of the 1970s great calculator race... Compact electronic calculators had been around since the mid-1960s, although 'compact' was a relative term. They were serious, expensive tools for business. So it was quite a breakthrough in 1967 when Texas Instruments presented the Cal-Tech: a prototype battery powered 'pocket' calculator using four integrated circuits. It sparked a wave of interest. Canon was one of the first to launch a pocket calculator in 1970. The Pocketronic used Texas Instruments integrated circuits, with calculations printed on a roll of thermal paper. Sharp was also an early producer of pocket calculators. Unlike Canon they used integrated circuits from Rockwell and showed the calculation on a vacuum fluorescent display. The carrying handle was a nice touch!
The next year brought another big leap: the Hewlet-Packard HP35. Not only did it use a microprocessor it was also the first scientific pocket calculator. Suddenly the slide rule was no longer king; the 35 buttons of the HP35 had taken its crown. The most stylish pocket calculator was undoubtedly the Olivetti Divisumma 18, designed by Mario Bellini. Its smooth look and soft shape has become something of a tech icon and an inspiration for many designers. It even featured in Space:1999! By 1974 Hewlett Packard had created another first: the HP-65 programmable pocket calculator. Programmes were stored on magnetic cards slotted into the unit. It was even used during the Apollo-Soyuz space mission to make manual course corrections. The biggest problem for pocket calculators was the power drain: LED displays ate up batteries. As LCD displays gained popularity in the late 1970s the size of battery needed began to reduce. The 1972 Sinclair Executive had been the first pocket calculator to use small circular watch batteries, allowing the case to be very thin. Once LCD displays took off watch batteries increasingly became the norm for calculators. Solar power was the next innovation for the calculator: Teal introduced the Photon in 1977, no batteries required or supplied!
But the biggest shake-up of the emerging calculator market came in 1975, when Texas Instruments -- who made the chips for most calculator companies -- decided to produce and sell their own models. As a vertically integrated company Texas Instruments could make and sell calculators at a much lower price than its competitors. Commodore almost went out of business trying to compete: it was paying more for its TI chips than TI was selling an entire calculator for. With prices falling the pocket calculator quickly moved from business tool to gizmo: every pupil, every student, every office worker wanted one, especially when they discovered the digital fun they could have! Calculator games suddenly became a 'thing', often combining a calculator with a deck of cards to create new games to play. Another popular pastime was finding numbers that spelt rude words if the calculator was turned upside down; the Samsung Secal even gave you a clue to one!
The calculator was quickly evolving into a lifestyle accessory. Hewlett Packard launched the first calculator watch in 1977... Casio launched the first credit card sized calculator in 1978, and by 1980 the pocket calculator and pocket computer were starting to merge. Peak calculator probably came in 1981, with Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator released as a cassingle in a calculator-shaped box. Although the heyday of the pocket calculator may be over they are still quite collectable. Older models in good condition with the original packaging can command high prices online. So let's hear it for the pocket calculator: the future in the palm of your hand!
The next year brought another big leap: the Hewlet-Packard HP35. Not only did it use a microprocessor it was also the first scientific pocket calculator. Suddenly the slide rule was no longer king; the 35 buttons of the HP35 had taken its crown. The most stylish pocket calculator was undoubtedly the Olivetti Divisumma 18, designed by Mario Bellini. Its smooth look and soft shape has become something of a tech icon and an inspiration for many designers. It even featured in Space:1999! By 1974 Hewlett Packard had created another first: the HP-65 programmable pocket calculator. Programmes were stored on magnetic cards slotted into the unit. It was even used during the Apollo-Soyuz space mission to make manual course corrections. The biggest problem for pocket calculators was the power drain: LED displays ate up batteries. As LCD displays gained popularity in the late 1970s the size of battery needed began to reduce. The 1972 Sinclair Executive had been the first pocket calculator to use small circular watch batteries, allowing the case to be very thin. Once LCD displays took off watch batteries increasingly became the norm for calculators. Solar power was the next innovation for the calculator: Teal introduced the Photon in 1977, no batteries required or supplied!
But the biggest shake-up of the emerging calculator market came in 1975, when Texas Instruments -- who made the chips for most calculator companies -- decided to produce and sell their own models. As a vertically integrated company Texas Instruments could make and sell calculators at a much lower price than its competitors. Commodore almost went out of business trying to compete: it was paying more for its TI chips than TI was selling an entire calculator for. With prices falling the pocket calculator quickly moved from business tool to gizmo: every pupil, every student, every office worker wanted one, especially when they discovered the digital fun they could have! Calculator games suddenly became a 'thing', often combining a calculator with a deck of cards to create new games to play. Another popular pastime was finding numbers that spelt rude words if the calculator was turned upside down; the Samsung Secal even gave you a clue to one!
The calculator was quickly evolving into a lifestyle accessory. Hewlett Packard launched the first calculator watch in 1977... Casio launched the first credit card sized calculator in 1978, and by 1980 the pocket calculator and pocket computer were starting to merge. Peak calculator probably came in 1981, with Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator released as a cassingle in a calculator-shaped box. Although the heyday of the pocket calculator may be over they are still quite collectable. Older models in good condition with the original packaging can command high prices online. So let's hear it for the pocket calculator: the future in the palm of your hand!
It was an HP calculator which rode along on the Space Shuttle.
https://airandspace.si.edu/col...
I have the same scientific calculator model now as I did when I went through university, 30 years ago. Hammers age slowly, once peak hammer was reached. Screwdrivers, ditto. The scientific calculator with its multi-line LCD screen will be around for a long time yet.
Now this is a nerd story we can all enjoy.
I bought what I could afford a T.I. SR-56, the year I graduated from High School. There was no way I could afford a full computer. I spent a lot of time programming that thing.
I had an HP-65 early on; loved programming it but the power was flaky. Then I got an HP-25 and it was glued to my side for years. Do androids count with RPN? Yes, yes they do.
I was interested in the material until I realized every link was to a tweet. We can do better than this.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Every single link in the summary points to the same Twitter account. @PulpLibrarian isn't very anonymous, but he's a coward for the lame attempt.
I have a HP-15C purchased in 1985 and it is still running on the original batteries - 32 years!
That is phenomenal low power design for the technology and knowledge at the time.
Not hard to figure out who you are since exactly 18 of the 18 links you posted are to your own Twitter account.
I hope people who can be bothered with Twitter accounts show up there to give you a well-deserved really hard time.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
... I was in Memphis, Tenn. studying electronics using a slide rule.
Our classroom had a LARGE one above the blackboard, kinda like the large alphabet signs in grade school.
As an extension of the physics portion, I became enthralled by Special Relativity (SR).
I did a deep dive and manipulated the math to gain an intuitive real-world feel for SR.
A huge fucking problem was extracting square root.
SR only manifests itself at high percentages of the speed of light in a vacuum.
A slide rule was useless when going for lots of decimal places, so I extracted square root by hand using paper and pencil.
It was very painful.
I'd have to perform the calculation three (3) times to verify that I had not made a mistake.
I often asked myself, "Am I trying to understand SR or trying to learn how to successfully find the goddam square root?"
It was a massive speed bump.
The first time I saw a "pocket" calculator, an officer was wearing one aboard the aircraft carrier.
It had four functions: add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
It looked like those goddam Motorola cell phones where the antenna tickled your arm pit.
$1,000.
Later, I bought a TI for $100 and it was an improvement because it also had one memory and ... SQUARE ROOT!.
Thank you Jesus!
At last, I could skate right by the speed bump and begin to grok SR.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Do you remember log tables? We were taught them as historic math, a curiosity not really for use.
Now I have a Casio pocket calculator that does symbolic math, and it cost me less than $20 with a battery lasting 5 years.
My dad's friend was a gadget hound, and had one of these in the 80's. Not a great machine. The keys were weird and mushy. It had no electronic display. It only had a thermal printer that printed shiny dark gray numbers on shiny light gray paper. In other words, visibility was poor. It looked amazing, though, and you could spill a coke on it and the keys would still work.
Much more impressive but more utilitarian - he had a completely electro-mechanical rotary auto-dial telephone. It took small, hard plastic punch cards you'd put the number on. You'd push the card into a slot on the telephone, and it would feed the card in and out, generating pulses until it got to the number you punched out. Then it would pull the card back in and do it again for the next number until the whole number was dialed. No digital anything, just relays and motors.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
(To be read upside down on an old calculator)
It was HP who started them.
I miss the HG-48 from the 80â(TM)s. It was great. Slow by todayâ(TM)s standards of course because (I think) it ran a lot of itâ(TM)s functions in some kind of interpreted language. But in addition to all the functions we think about today it had a great equation library in it. I rarely had to memorize an equation; I just needed to understand it. It was also highly programmable with lots of optional expansions for it (I think those required the 48-GX?)
You could even turn the thing into an IR remote control for TVs and such.
Of course, now we have literal pocket computers so this is really just history at this point. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if you suddenly appeared in 1990 with even a HP PDA (forget what those were called). People would think you were James Bond or something. Then when the NSA picked you up you could try to convince them that you really are from the future and that your Vorlon ship is waiting in orbit.
I had a TI calculator in college in the mid 80's that was a piece of junk. Keys would become harder to press, and the display got progressively dodgy. Eventually it would erase memory when certain keys were pressed. It had the lowest price per features, but you got what you paid for.
I think it was the TI 35 Slim-Line.
Table-ized A.I.
Where is Sinclair in this story ? They made some very nice calculators in the very early days.
Today I hardly use a real calculator anymore, smartphone does it nicely.
I remember that one - it was my first calculator. I used it - or tried to in my college Physics class back in 74 but they refused to let me use it for exams! The made me use a slide-rule because they considered calculators "cheating". It wasn't for another couple years that you could get away with using a calculator for exams. Times have thankfully changed !
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
One day when we are all using google glass there will be a nostalgia article about how everyone had a phone in their pockets.
OK I kid. Google Glass is never going to takeover but some form of Augmented reality based interface will take over from a slab of glass interface.
**Life is too short to be serious**
80085
The HP42S (and for some, the HP48) was the pinnacle of Engineering Calculators. It still is the fastest and most complete calculator for an EE or mechanical engineer.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp42s.htm
Free42 is the Open Source clone (not ROM emulator), but with expanded functionality.
http://thomasokken.com/free42/
Both are RPN. Once you go RPN, you'll never go back, but it isn't for everyone.
of course the high school my kid attended required a TI-84 for students.
They left out the other significant development in cheap calculators, the built-in solar power which meant no batteries at all.
Someone else already complained about RPN and someone else mentioned 80085 so my work is done.
Hello,
And of course the story continues, even if calculators are now mostly used by students...
Just yesterday the french TI planet site published their annual graphing calculator test and elected the HP prime as "best"!
https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21812&p=234890#p234890
Also worthy of mention is the HP 12C. This calculator model has been sold by HP for over 35 years! THE EXACT SAME ELECTRONIC PRODUCT SOLD FOR 35 YEARS! trully incredible.
Like the iPod, the TI calculators were not great, but they were very easy to use. The HP calculators were and are beatiful. But ease of use won out.
Another thing that won out was until about a decade ago all TI calculators were very limited. This made them ideal machines for tests. HP calculators could do unit analsys, and since 1990 they had algebra systems, and could even do calculus. This made them the ideal machine for technical students and professionals, but no high school would waste time teaching it because all they care about is filling out bubbles on an answer sheet.
The interesting contemporary issue that I see is that schools are still teaching calculators when really smart phones can do everything and more, especially with apps like Wolfram Alpha. Unless you are a legacy HP user, asking kids to buy a calculator just to boosts TI profits seems very wasteful to me. This is going to change as more tests move to online format, and online resources such as Desmos take over the physical clacultor, but in the meantime the taxpayer is on the hook for millions of dollars a year per large school district just for legacy technology.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It’s a shame that kids today don’t learn about RPN.
... first computer. Protable and programmable was more important to me than gaming. :-)
You could say I've been doing mobile development since 1986.
It still uses its third set of batteries.
Hows that for battery time, hmmm?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Story's a bit off...
I bought a TI SR-50 freshman year in college, 1974. I think they were introduced in 1973. Before that, the TI SR-10... 1972.
Although what they will be "reading" that history on, is anybody's guess.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I remember my Dad driving two hours to a specialty shop to buy his Corvus 500 (HP-45 competitor) in 1975. One of the few non-HP models to use RPN. Wasn't cheap - about $330 in today's dollars - but it really sped up the engineering work he took home. My brother and I killed several 9V batteries watching the LEDs flash as it made calculations :)
Thanks for the trip down the memory lane. Here is my story-line. I did my under-grad in engineering in Bangalore, in the late 80s. Casio fx-100 was the workhorse then, solar powered calculator were just becoming popular. After that I did my MS at Arizona State, bought a fx-82g (think I bought it from Target in Mesa), graphics calculator, I still have it, not in working condition though. After spending a few years in US, moved back to my hometown, my kids who are in high school now bought a casio calculator last year ! That was a kick-ass moment for me, seeing the cycle repeat. Not sure how long my kids are going to use the calculator, they have the big smartphones, some of the examinations, including the SAT allows calculators, not smartphones.
An interesting NHK World documentary about Japanese calculator culture and the history of calculators in Japan. I generally watch these at speed = 1.5.
Begin Japanology (13 June 2013) - Calculators
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
At least the few I tried in TFA. This is a techies forum FFS. I block Facebook and Twitter.
I love my TI-89. I still use it daily. There's a lot to be said for multiple decades of practice on a calculator. Even the emulator of it on my phone, for when I don't have it handy, isn't the same.
It doesn't need to be particularly fast or do huge calculations--that's what programming something else is for. But nothing beats a good calculator for immediate results.
I still own my first calculator, a Hanimex 830M. It runs on a single AA battery and uses aVF display, not LEDs. The display is basically a special vacuum tube, you can see the cathodes glow a very dark red when you use it in the dark.
The controller is a TMS1045 from TI.
Besides some yellowing of the case, it has held up perfectly and works like new. Only downside is the power consumption, it needs about 100mA, most of it likely going to the voltage converter circuit for the VFD. So an AA doesn't last very long. The knew this when they made it, so a barrel connector for an external power supply is included. Only problem is to find one that provides 1.5V.
The HP-45 has an undocumented stopwatch feature: press RCL then simultaneously press ENTER-[MINUS]-7
In high school, we used to run calculator races (usually timing how long it took to calculate 99!). Some cheaper calculators would buzz audibly under load, or take noticeably longer when the device was cold.
Later in college I got an HP 42 which was so much faster than everything else I got banned from competition.
Agreed! We have 2 kids in high school who both need TI 83 or 84 series calculators for class, and it's kind of ridiculous how much money those things fetch, even on the used market, JUST because so many school districts have standardized on them.
At our oldest kid's high school, they supposedly provide loaners for the kids who don't have or can't afford their own, but it's become HIGHLY discouraged because so many kids were stealing the loaners and reselling them. (Even on Amazon, when you look at reviews of used ones sold by individuals on there, you often see complaints that one arrived with a "Property of XXX School District" decal stuck to the bottom of it.")
It's far cheaper to buy a TI 83 or 84 simulator app for a smartphone, or heck -- to even buy a cheap Android phone AND the app!
Who brought out his range in 1972.
I got both of my kids (Engineering and CS Grads) slide rules for graduation presents.
MSMASH, you fail to grasp the concept of "summary" - four substantial paragraphs? To meet the demands of faithful Slashdot readers, your summary needs it's own summary.
Ken
TI introduced their SR-10 calculator in 1972, not 1975. I bought one in 1973. It could do SQUARE and SQUARE ROOT in addition to the four basic functions, for around $100. A marvel!
They released the SR-50 calculator, full trig-log capable, in 1974. I replaced my SR-10 with one of these before going off to college.
In the early '70s, there was a company out in Santa Monica, called Compucorp (also an OEM for Monroe). They had a line of programmable (basically macro recording) calculators before either HP or TI, IIRC. There were a few models: scientific, bond trader, and surveyor, each with key functions appropriate for the trade. Big devices, as they used a 1/2" vacuum fluorescent display, and needed 4 "D"-size NiCads for portable power. Desktop versions had a mag card writer/reader to store the programs.
Although the scientific was later outclassed by the TIs and HPs (something weird closed the company in the mid-70s), there was a bit of a business converting them to surveyor and bond trader models; the latter very functional and cost-effective for that business.
Several folks have mentioned the poor response of TI calculator keys. Many years ago I had some kind of TI scientific calculator with keys that began to poop out. When I wrote TI about it, they said to send back the calculator (which was *far* past the warranty period). They replaced it with a new TI-35 Plus which I still use. Kudos to TI for excellent customer support.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I had a Datamath in 1973, and a SR-57 programmable (100 steps, 10 memories) in 1975. Those were the days.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First calculator that did octal and hex math (also binary). Got one when they came out, cost $50 in 1977. Still have it, still works, although the nicad battery died long ago. In a remarkable show of foresight, TI made the battery pack with a standard 9V battery connector, and provided a special battery door that let you replace the rechargeable battery with a normal 9V. I replaced it with a solar powered Casio that did a bunch more stuff, but the TI still works.
The Bowmar Brain (1971) was the first electronic calculator made in the USA and it was also the first inexpensive calculator sold in the USA. As a result, it was also the first widely used calculator in the USA. http://www.vintagecalculators....
I graduated with a BS in engineering in late 1970 and entered the Air Force in 1971. In mid 1973, I took a graduate course in E.E. at a university in Ohio near where I was stationed at that time. I was very surprised, when at the first session of the class, there were only two people in the course that HAD Slide Rules. Me, with my trusty K&E log log duplex decitrig, and the professor teaching the course! Every one else taking the course had a scientific calculator.
I think the professor noticed and may have cut me a little slack! However, after that course was over, when the TI-35's broke through the $$100 level at the BX on base I was first in line for one.
People at numworks tries to renew calculators market, using OSS and open hardware. It contains an upgradable firmware with different computing softwares (on a small color LCD matrix display).
For french market, it has an "exam" mode to be authorized (where phones will be prohibited).
-- Laurent Pointal
I was working at a research facility making integrated circuits (for specific industrial and defense purposes). I remember when they first 4 function calculators started appearing in offices & they had to be locked up because they sold for ~$US100. By Christmas that year they were on shelves for $25 and had added function keys for square & square root.
I bought my FiL one for $10 as a Christmas gift and he thought it was the greatest thing he had ever seen. He ran around the house all day looking for things to calculate. He calculated his natural gas bill & found out they had over charged him nearly a nickle in Nov. He pulled out his records (he was a paper hoarder) and found they had over charged him a few cents every month for as long as he had bills for. He called the gas company up a few days later & they simply asked how much he thought they owed him. He gave them a number & they credited his bill no questions asked.
It is almost impossible to find new slide rules now
It's almost impossible to find new buggy whips now too. Life and technology moves on.
I still have one, which I keep as an heirloom.
I inherited my grandfather's slide rule which is a pretty awesome one. Even has a leather holster. I have no practical use for it but it's still really cool (to me) anyway.
One reason I am glad I actually held on to mine from school. I still have an 83+ and a 89 in working order that my kids will be using in a few years. I am sure the 89 will be late HS or college though.
The scientific calculator with its multi-line LCD screen will be around for a long time yet.
I'm sure it will but frankly they ceased being of much utility to me the moment I graduated from college despite working as an engineer for the last 20+ years. Any calculations I need to do are almost always easier and faster to do with the vastly more powerful PC sitting on my desk. I still have several old TI and HP calculators but I'm sure the batteries in them died years ago and I honestly cannot remember the last time I pulled one out to use. I have an old slide rule too that doesn't get any love either. I'm well aware there are field service jobs where they are quite useful but if you have a PC in front of you they really don't save me any time except in rare corner cases. I can (and do) replicate the functionality with an app on my PC or smartphone should the need ever arise.
I'm both an engineer and an accountant and do some of both in my day job. You would be astonished how many accountants still rely on paper tape calculators even when they have a perfectly functional and far more useful spreadsheet sitting right in front of them. First thing I did at my current job was to throw all the paper tape calculators the company had in the dumpster because those things are a terrible idea that people only use because they don't know any better.
When I began on my job in 1973, I had a mechanical calculator that needed over 20 seconds to calculate 22.000.000.000/7.
We had a maintenance contract for it, because it needed service at least once a year.
That contract was more expensive than buying a dozen new electronic ones for everybody in the room but we had to wait 5 years until finally somebody in management grew some brains.
We bought our own long before that.
They replaced it with a new TI-35 Plus which I still use. Kudos to TI for excellent customer support.
You do know that they can do this because they cost TI virtually nothing to make. A few dollars at most. The profit margin on these things has to be enormous because all the tooling was fully depreciated years ago and it's not like they are dropping a lot of money on new designs. I'll agree it's good customer service but it wasn't like they really incurred a big expense in the process. I'm just astonished you actually bothered to contact them instead of just buying a new one.
The identity of the hero who was the first to spell "BOOBS" on a calculator.
my HP41CX still rules my day life
On the early, early calculator craze, but I started repairing these in 76.
I was repairing Sharp calculators, desktop and handheld, back then, mostly the business machines, but I inherited the work on CS-10s and similar. These went into some engineering departments, replacing Monroematics and Divisumma 24s, which were being repaired a bench away from me still.
When the CS-10s replaced the Monroematics, engineers went from setting up a calculation, execute, and go off for coffee and a cigarette, or two. Then of course note the results, repeat, and potentially do this for two days. Elapsed work time, 16 hours. Actual work time, 12 minutes.
My predecessor congratulated me on missing out on that introduction. For the first few months those CS-10s suffered a lot of failures - keys, displays, and massive logic failures, caused by physical damage and liquid spills. The engineers were in full revolt. That ended when management explained that the New York office had made the transition successfully, and would not see layoffs for for a year. And yes, the office I serviced didn't see layoffs either until the backlog of work was finished, and 'automation' took early victims. My predecessor and I were so unwelcome at that office we started getting machines delivered to us, rather than travelling to do key and cord fixes. That was really never worth it, but my shop supervisor was a typewriter guy and believed in desktop service...
I repaired QT-8 (magnificent machine), EL-8 (ditto), EL-811, even bought an EL-814 cause I loved the look... And then leapt to the desktop business printing calculators for a while, when they were worth fixing.Some old drum printers were fun to fix, but eventually they got so simple and the disc printers were just annoying. Then the prices collapsed, and they were no longer worth fixing.
It was a fun job, I was servicing Sony dictating machines, and the BM-10 was an awful machine. That or the BM-11 mechanism flew on Apollo I think, they had the counter-revolving flywheels to solve motion problems. Then the was the same chassis as the first Walkman, TPS-L2, good thing I fixed them. Those literally fell apart when used hard. Moving through micro cassettes to the inevitable digital recorders was interesting, but the dictation business failed when PCs and word processing made it tolerable for professionals (attorneys mostly) to draft their documents themselves and send them on to secretaries to be proofed and finished.
By then, I had migrated to Selectrics, DisplayWriters, OS/6, and electronic typewriters, and of course those gave way to word processors and then PCs so fast they piled up in closets. But those old calculators were fabulous, more reliable than should have been expected. Some weird Japanese design going on back then too, stuff that today would be lovely underneath a steampunk skin.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I so badly wanted a 4-function calculator that I got my first job ever just to raise $149.50 to buy an Commodore US*4 calculator from Edmund Scientific. The cheapest other ones I could find were over $200 back then (1972 - I was a junior in high school), and it would take much longer at $1.20/hour to get there.
My employer, a pharmacist, had one of those insanely expensive 4-function business-class desk calculators with 12 Nixie tube digits. It could not chain calculations involving multiplication or division, and the decimal point was a manually-operated plastic slider!
A lot of high school forbid the anything above the TI-85. I’ve seen some school limit it to TI-83 Plus or lower.
Way before the VIC-20...I had (still have, though it doesn't work) a Commodore PR-100 "Made in England" calculator. $75 mailorder in 1975. 45 buttons with shifted functions for most of them. 72 key presses of programming but no way to save the program so you had to enter it each time (think IMSAI with no tape reader, just front panel switches - the only program flow functions were GOTO and SKIP). The programming was mainly intended as a way to string functions together; I used it, but rarely. LED display of 12 digits carrying 14 internally - for some accounting classes I had to use the INT and FRAC keys to display the full precision. 2-3 hours of battery life. Brown, yellow, and ivory color scheme. It would probably work again if I cleaned up the battery mess inside (olde NiCds), replaced any capacitors, and put in a new NiCd (3 AA cell pack; used to be available in all Radio Shack stores because phones used them). Also need to find a 6V wall wart with a 1/8" phone plug to charge it.
One place I worked simply gave everybody a HP-12C. I hardly used most of the functions, but before Windows and a calc on the screen (or on a phone) it was small, light, and handy. Still have it, too, someplace.
I don't actually collect this stuff; it's just too much trouble to find a recycling place that will take it so it stays in a corner or a box someplace.
Haha alzhy papy lolol calculators lolol
Anyone remember this company? I worked for them briefly in the late 80’s long after the Bowmar business was gone, but prior to another management change and name change. Until 1990, they were known as Bowmar/ALI. Still had some old ads for the Brain on the plant walls back then.
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/bowmar.html
I need to put some tape over the camera on the laptop.
That Sinclair had an LED display. What was revolutionary was the fact it was pulsed fast enough to fool the eye/brain into seeing a fixed image, saving a huge amount of energy. The display did appear to shimmer a little bit.
Does anyone remember the see-thru calculators teachers used on overhead projectors? I grew up in the late 80's/early 90's before all this Smart Board stuff and my teachers had a clear calculator they could use on the overhead.
My grandpa was a scientist back in the 60's and has a ton of old analog and digital calculators. My favorite is an old HP about the size of a VHS tape.
Still, have and use my HP Scientific RPN Calculator. Had it since the 70's and have yet to replace the batteries.
Contacting them was time well spent.
Glad to hear it. Nice to see some companies actually taking a little time to care. I would have just binned the thing and bought a new one because customer service at most companies these days is so bad as to not be worth the time and aggravation. That would have been a bad assumption by me in this case.