Calculator Stories
ok, I have one for ya... an engineering friend was on his way to work. In the middle of the road, he noticed a calculator case. typical TI scientific calculator size (mid 80s). He stops, picks it up. Hoping to find a calculator. Instead it is perfectly stuffed with 10k in small bills. He sweats all day at work and comes home to an engineer and a working waitress english major. the bills are pulled and and counted. the word "shit" is flown around like no one has ever heard.....I am not telling the rest of the story. but...what's your calculator story?
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My favorite story was actually told to me by my roommate at Cal Poly when we were in school there. It was during finals week when my buddy was walking through the 1st floor of the Achitecture building when, suddenly, a door from a classroom flew open near the end of a test (obviously) and a student dashed out. He made a beeline straight for a big trash can where he held out his calculator over the can and, gripping it at each end with his hands, he twisted it into a thousand pieces - explosively. I think he even yelled out, "Yeaahhh!!!" in anger while doing it.
I'll never forget that story.
I have my old 15c from college, one of the original 48 from my early engineering days, a couple 33s (for the P.E. exam) and now a 12c for my financial calcs. Great calculators. The old ones never die.
I saw my old TI-33 in a box I was rummaging through the other day. I've got a number old calculators from the 70s and 80s.
Of course, I can remember calculators that weighed more (and were noisier) than modern desktop computers (cost more, too...)
For a period, when he was younger, my dad used to sell Freidens, Merchants, Monroes... a job he really loved, and one that caused Dr. Van Allen (of the radiation belts) to think he was a genius. :)
Went against the wrong post...
BTW, this calculator will do symbolic differentiation and integration as well as matrix math. In graduate digital controls class I flew though problems by pushing "x^-1", rather than doing the long-hand adjoint/determinant. Great calculator for 1987!
About 3yrs ago, I stopped carrying my HP48G (which was a waste on a management-puke like me anyway), and just use a nice RPN app on my iPhone and iPad!
Here's mine.
Last week my son stopped by. He walked in the front door holding a calculator pinched between his thumb and pointer finger, and said "is somebody trying to melt this thing?" It was my husband's calculator. He said "oh shit. I forgot I put that out there." It's a solar calculator that wasn't working, or so I'm assuming anyway. We live in AZ ... And it's July. The birds didn't bother it.
In 11th grade, many year ago, I had an instructor who conducted a class experiment. Half of the class was given calculators to work with and the rest was left to do the algebra on paper by hand ( I was without). Every single person without a calculator finished the 25 problems well before those who used calculators.
Not quite the caliber story as they rest of you but it was an opportunity to share a memory that stuck with me all these years.
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