Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/19/digital-sliderules.html
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In before 58008…
I, too had a “Little Professor” learning calculator!
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I remember one guy in high school who wore his hp65 on his belt. I still had a slide rule, but my mom eventually bought me a ti58, which was a real piece of crap. Eventually, I got an hp41 with the card reader. Good times.
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but do they play a little melody?
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I entered High School in 1975, started with a slide rule, but by 1976 calculators were everywhere. I still have my slide rule, and my original Ti-30. The Ti-30 had a 9 volt battery and it would actually take some time “thinking” before giving you an answer. 58008 looked much better in red LED.
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I used to wear Casio calculator watches [hum…they’re still a thing…]. They weren’t all that useful really, but the nerd factor was off the scale.
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I always found it handy to have an unbent paper clip to mash the buttons with.
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I had forgotten about the Little Professor, but I totally had one!
Since I played classical guitar, I had finger nails that worked for that. Just never found a lot of use for it other than figuring out how much groceries you were sticking in the cart.
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Letting people in the front row play with the calculator is next level fanservice.
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in 1970 my mom and dad, school teachers, bought a medium size desktop calculator with led display and a paper tape they could use if they wanted to attach a hard copy to anything. it cost $150. which they paid out over 6 months. that amount would be close to $1000 in 2018 dollars. it was considered a marvel of size, speed, and beauty by the other teachers. the principal at mom’s school had an electro-mechanical calculator with a division function you could use to average grades. it weighed around 25 pounds. using the division function would require 30-45 seconds worth of gears grinding to get to the answer,
just under ten years afterwards you could buy a 4 function calculator with memory keys for $5 or less and get one with a paper tape around $15.
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My dad had one of those cool desktop calculators (like the one behind the HP calculator with a separate chip in one of the photos above) and it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, because the numbers on the display were formed with little lit-up wires.
And no, I’m not that old; the calculator was an ancient one my dad had brought home from work. Well, I guess I’m kinda old, at that.
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the article is tagged with “5378008” but i think you want “55378008” . that goes along with a little gag where you go "Pamela Anderson’s boobs weighed 69 [type 6 and 9 on the calculator] pounds. Her doctor said they were too [type 2] too [type 2] too [type 2] big. As she was walking around 5th [type 5] and 1st [type 1] streets, she met Doctor X [type ‘x’ for multiply] who did 8 [type 8] operations, and in the end she was [type enter and turn the calculator over].
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I don’t remember if we had this one. I think a friend brought it to school one day…
In my country it ws called Professor Corujinha (Professor Little Owl) because it was a calculator and a teacher, but also a smart teacher and everybody knows that owls are very smart.
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The Casio VL-1 does!
Kraftwerk’s “calculator”, however, is really a Mattel Bee Gees Rhythm Machine.
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And the Casio ML-82! http://casio.ledudu.com/pockets.asp?lg=eng&type=1274
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I got the Casio VL-1 for Christmas. That thing was awesome. That’s where I first learned about ADSR, mad learnings I unleashed with a vengeance on my Commodore 64.
Here’s an old VL-1 classic:
As for TI calculators this one always cracks me up:
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Though it’s not electronic, I feel there should be some mention of the Curta:
A 4 function mechanical calculator used by - among others - many at NASA in the Sixties.
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Came for Kraftwerk, leaving satisfied!
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Twitter is an awful medium for longform articles.
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