Computing Power

[dryheat]

When I was in school for some reason I took a class in ten key adding machine. That was the most miserable thing I ever did. You could never pay me enough to do that all day. That was a long time ago and now you cannot give them away.

[BuckeyeShooter]

A friend of mine in college (1971) bought a Texas Instruments calculator (TI-10). The price was $100, a hefty sum back then. The calculator was considered state of the art at the time but only did the basic 4 functions (+ - * /).

Back in 1971-2 I bought one of those TI scientific calculators for $150. I was taking a corespondence course. Lke you said, they were expensive.
Every time I got the monthly bill, the balance matched the new lower price.

[gpb]

Was the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) a specific purpose-built analog computer or a programed digital computer?

[Phloating Phlasher]

It was the first actual electronic computing device.

[Vern Humphrey]

When I started university, studying to be a civil engineer, nobody had even conceived of a tiny portable calculator that would fit in your shirt pocket. We understood that we would need a slide rule and on the assumption that I would be using it for about 40 years, I blew my very small budget and bought the best one on the market. A year after I graduated one of my colleagues came to work with the first 4 function, shirt pocket calculator that any of us had ever seen. A few years later, my wife, who taught computing at high school, took my slide rule to school, along with an abacus and Pascals beads to show her students what obsolete calculators looked like

I still have my old Post slide rule from college.

[Johnny P]

The Post Versalog was the hot slide rule, and the joke was that the square root of 4 was 1.999.

[Vern Humphrey]

The Post Versalog was the hot slide rule, and the joke was that the square root of 4 was 1.999.

That's what my Post says.

[one shot]

I had an early tandy computer then a 286 compaq

[Vern Humphrey]

I had an early tandy computer then a 286 compaq

Mine was so early that it was a Model 1 with a Model 2 chip. No disks -- we used a tape recorder.

[Allen]

Mine was so early that it was a Model 1 with a Model 2 chip. No disks -- we used a tape recorder.

Mine was so old model numbers hadn't been invented yet.

I wonder where all those cords are going. A wall outlet?