How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm talking
about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95, Wang,
IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus one
bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone with a
hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the ability
to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid today what 100
times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

Ivan Vegvary