On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:35:50 -0800, "Steve B"
wrote:


"Steve B" wrote in message
...
My first electronic calculator in the early seventies was over $35 and
all it could do was add, multiply, subtract and devide - if you could
keep batteries in it.

Today a $2 calculator will run for a couple years on a battery, do
square roots, metric conversions, etc and has 2 or 3 memories.
A $30 calculator is a full programmable scientific calculator with a
solar cell and a battery you never need to replace.

IIRC, I paid about $2 for a plastic slide rule in high school, from 62 to
66. A Pickett, which I still have, with the leather case was about $12.
How much would a $12 slide rule cost today adjusted for all the things it
needs to be adjusted for?

Far more than graphing calculator that would do calculus, if my guess is
right.

Steve

Found it, and a $12 item would cost $78 today. Still, with a slide rule,
you had to have an idea of what the answer would be, as they did not provide
decimal places in most cases, unless the value was less than one on the
scale. Interpolation was key.

One got used to keeping track of decimal places in one's head, a skill I
quickly lost when switching to a calculator. Even though I do such
calculations every day, I can't even do the simple estimates anymore. A
calculator is just too handy of a crutch to retain that skill.

It's not so much interpolation as estimation and that's only needed to read
the final result (or add ;-).

snip