First automatic calculator I ever saw was a desktop Wang back in '68 or '69 at the U of Minn. in the grad. geology dept. It sat on the dept. chair's desk like some sort of holy relic; the faculty took turns using it.
On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 9:18 AM, Floyd Thursby via Mercedes < mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > Back in the late 60s/early 70s my dad, who was an electronics engineer, > was talking with some guys and sketched out an idea for an electronic > calculator using whatever ICs were available, or maybe discrete components, > whatever was available at the time. THe other guys kinda poo-pooed it so he > never really pursued it. So then a coupla years later a company called > Bowmar that was in town, and some guys he peripherally knew had started the > company, built the "Bowmar Brain" which was kinda the first handheld > calculator. I don't think he was FOS as he always kicked himself for not > pursuing the idea at the time. > > I could own a whole fleet of Benzes now if he had done that. Oh, wait... > > --FT > > > > > On 2/8/18 12:11 AM, Curley McLain via Mercedes wrote: > >> My boss at my first real job (drafting) had one of those calculators. It >> always amazed me. In the company Engineering lab, a guy there had a brown >> and dull screw machine. My treasured possession at the time was a Post >> slipstick, that cost me big money ($21) at the Univ book store! A year >> later, I was expected to pay athe equivalent of a year's tuition for a HP >> calculator. That was a deal breaker. It was 20 times as much as the >> slipstick I struggled to buy. >> >> Scott Ritchey via Mercedes <mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com> >>> February 7, 2018 at 10:58 PM >>> Well, we had an IBM 360 for heavy-duty number crunching: batch jobs in >>> Fortran on punch cards with line-printer output. None of us could afford >>> the new HP35 electronic calculator but we did have a Friden mechanical >>> calculator in the office for routine stuff. It was capable of division and >>> we found that dividing all 6s by all 7s produced a tune we called the >>> Friden March. >>> >>> >>> >> _______________________________________ >> http://www.okiebenz.com >> >> To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ >> >> To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: >> http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com >> >> >> > -- > --FT > > > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
