Andy and I laughed at this one. It’s one more reminder of how archaic we are. We did our arithmetic by hand in grammar and high schools — in college we used slide rules. We didn’t get our first calculators until I was about 35 and Andy 40. We still think they were a great invention.
Do you have a calculator? Do you ever feel archaic?
October 21, 2016
I first used a slide rule in high school, then college and Navy Nuclear Power School. In the late 70s, I barely failed a requalification exam when I was an instructor at the Naval Reactor Facility in Idaho when they calculated the score by calculator. Then they went back and calculated it by slide rule… and I passed.
We don’t have a stand-alone calculator any more. Karen threw our last one away a couple of months ago due to sticking keys. We now just use the apps on our phones or computers.
Andy still uses our hand-held calculators. They’re all programmable, and I think he uses those features sometimes. I use the calculator that comes on the Mac, and I use it in RPN mode — a nice touch. If I have a string of numbers to sum I use Digits because it lets me check to be sure I entered all the numbers correctly.
I still have my slide rule. Never liked calculators because a slide rule has a much better straight edge for making sketches and free-body diagrams.
It does have that advantage. 🙂 I finally gave mine away last year.
I would never have passed chemistry if it hadn’t been for nubby beardsley and his slide rule!
and YES! I have an OLD pocket calculator that I use frequently. I love it.
remember in grammar school having to do page after page of long division?
wonder if kids can even do that now!
but then I guess they don’t have to. 🙂
I don’t remember the long division so much, but I remember missing 9 out of 12 problems on a multiplication worksheet in 7th or 8th grade. By then I had done so many my eyes would glaze over and my mind would go on strike. 🙂
No, I do not have or use a calculator. In fact, I am in the process of publishing a blog post in which I talk about calculators. My tryst with sums precedes even calculators.
I’m looking forward to your post.
Yes. Yes. 🙂
😀
I think I may still have my “shopping calculator” as it was one of my first “me purchases” and I bought it to compare brand$ when doing the food shopping…but I happen to know it’s bust!
I had to get a scientific calculator when I did a course at University…late last year I gave it to my great nephew as he was to begin high school this year. I hope he is getting some use, and not lost it…
I have a very interesting ruler – except I don’t know what it’s for…it may well be a slide rule as it has lots of notations all over it – brand is Faber Castell and Made in Germany copyright 1957 (but I don’t think it’s that old…)
Faber Castell did make slide rules. They have a web page about the history of slide rules.
okay thanks…this one is a wood one, quite narrow as such but has extra pull out parts and a plastic “window-slide” – on the reverse side a kind of measurement guide inc decimal equivalents of 1 foot; various scales inc lbs –> kilo; weight of metals…various geometry language…
and it has it’s own “case, plastic and well used looking…