RadioBanter - View Single Post

September 13th 03, 09:23 AM

(Jeffrey Herman) wrote in
:

Brian Kelly wrote:
The world was blessed with your codeless presence on Nov 11 1957.
Handheld calculators rendered slide rules obsolete when you were
14-15. Are you still using Leydon jars for capacitors Alun?

The basic four-function handheld calculator was still about $600
when he was 17; at least that's what we were selling them for at
RS at that time.

I was still using a slide rule in my 1980 college physics class.

Jeff KH6O

Well, that's why it's called Rip-off Shack. I had a couple of TI
scientific calculators when I was in college. The first one I
unfortunately lost (actually dropped from a motorcycle at 70-80 mph!), but
I still have the latter, although it hasn't been possible to replace the
battery pack for years, so it can't really be used.

I don't think either of these cost more than about $ 125 at most, and my
father bought a four-function Sharp for about $ 250 when I was about 13,
i.e. about 1970ish. In fact he replaced the Sharp with a CBM costing maybe
$ 75 when I was about 15 or so. Surely these couldn't have cost more in
the US, especially not the ones made by Texas Instruments?

If you sold a 4-function machine in Rip-off Shack for $ 600, surely that
can't have been when I was 17, i.e. 1974/5? That can't be right. In fact
that would have been when I got my first TI scientific, at 17, for a
fraction of that price. By 1980 I was on my second scientific calculator.