Your first calculator

[spring_mountain_high]

 

[andyzee]

Yep, was going to say the same. And it's the truth. In school we would be asked to calculate something, everyone would pull out their calculators, not me.

 

[soposkier]

 

[AdironRider]

I rotated through TI-83's and TI-89's back in school.

Now I live and die by my 10 key adding machine. Mmmmm accountant drool.

 

[bigbog]

Yeah billski....that SR-51. After grabbing that one...years after HS...it took me several weeks to get over the angst of HS, its associated bad karma, and the slide-rule, that is until someone actually told me to get over it....lol. That ~1975 model-name escapes me, but I DO distinctly remember it being off-limits to JR/SR HS students in testing at the time(via local News). Couldn't help but say to oneselft...like when is this f****d up society, outside the cities, going to grow up.

 

[billski]

Yep, was going to say the same. And it's the truth. In school we would be asked to calculate something, everyone would pull out their calculators, not me.

Great! What's the square root of 271? Quick! No cheating. No spreadsheets, no smartphone, no google. You can use your fingers.

 

[billski]

Well, now that I think about it, I took an "accounting" class in high school. We basically learned how to tame this beast:

Honest.

Outside of the class, this was my "personal" calculator.

Then came the slide rule (my senior year of high school was my introduction).
I just had a very fundamental one.

Slide rules could get quite expensive.

Oh yeah, and I forgot about the 7-foot slide rule for the classroom!

help me out here bigbob and warp!

 

[bvibert]

We had a slide rule in the house when I was a kid.

I used it as a sword.

 

[darent]

we had a mechanical Burroughs calculator at the bank where i worked, you could push a combination of numbers and it would run all day if you let it.