The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for October 01, 2016

I got a calculator in my last year in high school, and that was only because my Dad was working at Singer business machines and could get one with his company discount.

There was a total of two calculators in my electronics class. Mine, and the teacher’s. Both were “four bangers”, with square root (very important!). His had reciprocal, mine didn’t. Mine cost $50 (retail about $75) and his $150, in 1975. With inflation factored in, that $50 is about $$223.84 in today’s money.

An equivalent calculator today sells for less than $3 or .67 in 1975 dollars.

When I was in elementary school we had twenty digit calculators. Of course there was always someone who complained when you took your socks off.

Didn’t have a hand held scientific calculator until1971 before that a slide rule. Got my first computer in ’78.

Mine was called “pencil”.

I’ve got a calculator also, on my IPhone

abacus

My pencil!

A few months ago I ran across my old slide rule. It must have been over fifty years old. I still remembered how to use it but now the numbers are too small to read.

Yes. It was called a brain. Back when they still worked.

Stick and sand.

We were issued a pencil, the rest was up to the individual!

I was pre-calculator Engineering students used slide rules. Google it

In those days, calculators were the size of desktop computers.

I started engineering school in ‘73 armed with my dad’s K+E slip-stick in its trusty leather scabbard. Still have it, but retired it about a year later when TI came out with the SR-50.

Hand-held calculators were available [but a pretty big size] but we weren’t allowed to use them in class, because not everyone had one or could afford one and it was an unfair advantage to the ones who did have them. My last math class was in 1958.

had a slide rule in high school, bought my first calculator (a very basic model) after I joined the Air Force in ’74… may even still have the thing around here somewhere.

My brain, a #2 pencil & a big chief tablet!

abacus

Pencil and paper here until I got to high school, where we learned to use a slide rule. Got my first, 4-function digital calculator in 73, when I had been married a year. It cost around $80. My kids grew up with computers.

When I was in school, the only computer I had was called a brain.

An Encyclopedia and a Library Card.