Ivan Vegvary wrote:

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

I took pretty much the same route and I've still got my Curta. But, my
first true digital computer was a single board uncased SYM, a 6502
processor machine with 2K of RAM and a hex display.

I used the Curta mostly for competing in sports car
"time-speed-distance" rallies, and cranked it automatically with a
single revolution motorized drive. I've still got the Curta (with a hole
in the center of it's bottom cover) and the drive/hundredth of a mile
odometer box. G

See center photo he

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/rallying.html

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.8*10^12 furlongs per fortnight.