Fun talk:Calculator

I remember my first "electronic" calculator - it was the size and weight of a housebrick and had big bootiful red led digits; it would only add, multiply, subtract & divide & had a max of 8 digits inc decimal point. Life was simpler then - log tables & slide rules! Susan^{purrrrr ...} 04:42, 18 December 2007 (EST)

Heh, mine was actually my dad's, an old TI calculator that he used when he was going to college. It was quite big, and I sort of wish I still had it, but I do still have a TI Little Professor from the later part of that era that has the old LED display. It even still works... EVDebs 11:58, 18 December 2007 (EST)

Back even before (okay right before) calculators they came out with digital watches. They had small LED's that lit up. "Lit" was relative though as they couldn't be easily read in a brightly lit room or outside. I recall reading a review that stated something to the effect that, "it is a great timepiece if you are a coal miner and have the need for good accuracy."

A friend's dad had gotten one and the interesting thing about watching people look at the thing for the first time was that even though they knew it was "electronic" (piezoelectric quartz), they still held it up to their ears to "listen" to it, as if the concept hadn't gotten all the through their brains. CЯacke® 12:07, 18 December 2007 (EST)

I suppose it's entirely possible that on some of the older equipment, you might have been able to hear a high-pitched buzz from the clock crystal. I know the old LED displays have a noticeable flicker. EVDebs 15:14, 18 December 2007 (EST)

Slide rules, Susan? My dad remembers them rather fondly. How did they work? -- Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 05:06, 29 January 2008 (EST)

You may mock, but the wheel will turn and, some day, some kiddie will mock you for not having flying cars/Duke Nukem 4ever/fully functioning anthropomorphic robots/if I knew I'd make billions when you were growing up. Damn it, my son can't understand why series 1 (the 1963 one) of Dr Who had to be viewd from behind the sofa! Silver Sloth 06:59, 29 January 2008 (EST)

Ah, the slipstick. I used to have one -- my dad found it in some godforsaken place and gave it to me. I never learned how to use it, but if I could find it again it would be buried treasure. (In fact, I think it safe to say that someone could keep a small company in business making them for museum shops and educational supply companies...) RA, it's a little hard to explain exactly as I don't quite remember, but essentially they rely on logarithms. If you line up two scales in a specific way, the result is the product of the two original numbers. Or something like that. You can do division if one of the scales is inverted. Engineers liked them because they didn't promote false precision. You did, however, need to supply your own trig tables. EVDebs 00:18, 30 January 2008 (EST)