[downinflames68]

Thought you guys might dig this link:

Calculator company list

My grandma had a Datacal II by Corvus, which looked like this:



I remember using it on math homework in elementary school. So awesome, such a memory time warp!

[bstone]

What did the M button on the old calcs do?

[The Final Dakar]

Strobe the headlights.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by bstone 

What did the M button on the old calcs do?

The M button functioned much like the "M+" button in OS X's standard calculator app. Most calculators with an M button also had MR and MC (read and clear). M for memory.

But that Datacal that Rob posted actually has an "N" button, not an "M" button. I'd love to know what that one was for.

[ort888]

Nachos

[macforray]

It was 1974 and my parents spent $140 for the latest Bowmar Brain. I was off to college and I would need it. It even did trig functions. The end of the sliderule for me. My freshman math professor hated the calculators. He had no idea how to use them. He still had one of those big six foot long sliderules hanging in the front of the classroom that he used. We were the first class year allowed to use them in the classroom.

$140 was a lot of money back in 1974. I don't think I spent that much for my books for the first year.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by macforray 

It was 1974 and my parents spent $140 for the latest Bowmar Brain. I was off to college and I would need it. It even did trig functions. The end of the sliderule for me. My freshman math professor hated the calculators. He had no idea how to use them. He still had one of those big six foot long sliderules hanging in the front of the classroom that he used. We were the first class year allowed to use them in the classroom.

Speaking of slide rules, when I was in college we were shown a film in physics lab that was made in 1952. It was still relevant to the lab we were doing, of course, but the funniest part was where the guy in the video set up the calculation that was going to be done, and then said, "Let's get out our slide rules and figure out the answer." The video actually took five minutes to show him messing around furiously with the slide rule (it was a very complex calculation) and then he looked up at the end with a smile on his face. "The answer is 2." The whole class laughed at that one.

Of course, we had just punched the equation into our graphing calculators and knew the answer was 2 about 4 minutes and 50 seconds before the guy in the video did.

[brassplayersrock²]

Originally Posted by Person Man 

The M button functioned much like the "M+" button in OS X's standard calculator app. Most calculators with an M button also had MR and MC (read and clear). M for memory.

But that Datacal that ... posted actually has an "N" button, not an "M" button. I'd love to know what that one was for.

Nagger

[ghporter]

The very first calculator in my whole school district was purchased by our high school math department head; an HP 55, costing him almost $400. It was programmable, and could do so many different things...

I still have and use my HP-15C. Hard to beat RPN.

[SVass]

I have the following within reach:
Casio FX-115D Super FX Scientific calculator
Casio CM-100 computer math (does binary, octal, hex, and decimal, AND, NOR, etc)
MacWarehouse Diskette calculator (solar that looks like a 3.5 diskette and has an M button as well)
and a Pickett Model 4-T Dual Base Log-Log slide rule (Recently, I taught my granddaughter who was studying logarithms in high school how to look them up on this slide rule and how multiplication actually works because she needed some help.)

Over the years, I misplaced/lost my 6 inch Pickett and a Casio combination scientific calculator/digital wrist watch. I used the latter at work in a computer lab because it was always at "hand".

PS-Nowadays, I use Excel or Appleworks because they remember, display, and print.
sam

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by brassplayersrock² 

Originally Posted by Person Man 

The M button functioned much like the "M+" button in OS X's standard calculator app. Most calculators with an M button also had MR and MC (read and clear). M for memory.

But that Datacal that Rob posted actually has an "N" button, not an "M" button. I'd love to know what that one was for.

Nagger

Fixed.

[angelmb]

583 vintage calculators.

Calculator company list

[awaspaas]

What I would really love is a Curta.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by awaspaas 

What I would really love is a Curta.

They appear to be going for about $1000-$2000 on eBay, depending on the condition. My best friend's father has one that he bought in 1960 that he uses all the time. I played with it a couple times. Interesting device.

[downinflames68]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

583 vintage calculators.

Calculator company list

I posted that in the first post.

[angelmb]

Thanks for pointing that up. I need more sleep hours.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by awaspaas 

What I would really love is a Curta.

Is this compatible with Nikon cameras?

[finboy]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

The very first calculator in my whole school district was purchased by our high school math department head; an HP 55, costing him almost $400. It was programmable, and could do so many different things...

I still have and use my HP-15C. Hard to beat RPN.

I went through TWO of my 17B back in the old days, most folks were using the 12C. HP just produced a mid-tier financial calculator based on the revised 30 series, and I can't wait to work on one. I've got a 13 around here someplace that still works, too.