On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:03:44 -0600, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 12/27/2010 11:45 PM, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:21:48 -0600, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 12/27/2010 11:07 PM, Steve B wrote:
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


In 73, I met a guy at the university who owned one of the newfangled
HP calculators. I think it was the HP-45 and it cost him upwards of
$400.00 at the time.

I bought an HP-45 in October of '73 for $395. I was a married college senior,
making $2.25/hr. It replaced a $25 Post VersaLog I bought three years
earlier. I still have both.

It's amazing that you can buy something for ten
bucks today that will blow it away. :-)

Hardly. No one makes anything even close to an HP-45 anymore. The only thing
even HP made that came close was the 11C. I do have the "new" HP-35s, but
it's just a cheap imitation of the original.sob

I've actually come across the darn things in thrift stores for a few
dollars. I'll have to drop by the Salvation Army Thrift Store every
now and then to see If I can find one. :-)

If you can find an HP-45 with a working power switch, I'll take it! I have a
supply of batteries. I few years ago I found a battery replacement kit that
adapts standard AA batteries. ;-)