We all get excited about Moore's Law as it relates to shrinking feature sizes on chips, etc. But, have you stopped to think about what the cost of our toys has done over the years?
The HP-35 pocket calculator came out in 1973 (fall of 72?). The initial price was $395. Now, $395 for a pocket calculator would seem high today, but stop and think about what that represented then. When I graduated from college in 1975, the typical starting salary for a EE graduate was about $1000 per month. Gross. Before taxes. Probably something less in 1973. That HP-35 represented 40% of a new EE's salary for a month in 1975. And people bought them. Would you pay 40% of your monthly salary for a pocket calculator today? Would you even pay that much for a laptop computer? When it comes to computing devices, these are the good old days. Have a nice weekend. Ghery S. Pettit, NCE Intel Corporation - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
