Vintage Calculators

[ppppenguin]

Somewhere I still have my slide rule, bought in the early 1970s for school. Much easier than log tables, though only 2 significant digits of precision. I think it's an Aristo. When I was in the 6th form (1973/4) one of my classmates turned up with a Sinclair Scientific calculator. About as accurate as a slide rule! I'd also been invited to see round Imperial College where I first saw an HP35. Locked down in a cradle.

The Sinclair Scientific used a half-hearted version of reverse polish notation. In those politically incorrect days we called it "reverse Irish".

[djrm]

I repaired this interesting calculator recently, it has the unusual property of being able to work in floating point in both decimal, hex, and octal. shown here with the one I use most often. TI SR-22 and TI Programmer:
   
Brief video:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VYgZinetxwQ

One of my favorites is my Dad's Curta.
   

During the 70s and 80s I had a string of Casio programmable calculators, and finished with FX61F 'Electric Formula' which I still use. 
Another photo showing some more of my collections - including my slide-rule bought at school.
   

[Mike Watterson]

The Calc installed by default on Android appears to report to Google.

I installed a clone of the HP42 RPN calculator called Free42.

I have some €2 copies of a Casio scientific calculator for the multiple base BIN, OCT, HEX, DEC
For nostalgia I have an Abacus, battery desk VFD calc, and early LED calc as well as a Thornton Slide Rule (though not as comprehensive as the Thornton I had in the 1970s).

[ppppenguin]

I don't seem to use a calculator much these days. I've nearly always got Libreoffice Calc spreadsheets open so it's easy to do calculations there.

[Paul_RK]

This one's a minor curiosity, an Imperial L1019 in NOS condition that came my way long ago... it's one of just two out of the many Imperial models that the Vintage British  Calculators collection doesn't include.

http://www.vintagebritishcalculators.inf...erial.html

Not very British, though, as it's made in Japan. As the instruction manual boasts,

"Your desk-top calculator is equipped with an extremely large liquid crystal display (LCD) as well as with a C-MOS electronic module. These two elements guarantee minimal use of energy.

Four size C (Baby) batteries will supply energy for operation of your calculator for a period of 2-3 years!" 

That should be true even with frequent long periods of use, as power consumption is stated on a label underneath as 6V, 1mW.

Unfortunately, the designer ran with the infrequent need for new batteries as an excuse for an unusually wearisome procedure for changing them...

1. Remove both cross screws found on the underside of the calculator.
2. Remove both cross screws from the rear side.
3. Remove all knobs from the switches. 
4. Now take off upper part of housing. 
5. Replace old batteries with new ones,  making sure to place poles correctly.
6. Replace upper housing, knobs of switches and reinsert and tighten all 4 screws.

[BusyBee]

The Calc installed by default on Android appears to report to Google.

I installed a clone of the HP42 RPN calculator called Free42.

I have some €2 copies of a Casio scientific calculator for the multiple base BIN, OCT, HEX, DEC
For nostalgia I have an Abacus, battery desk VFD calc, and early LED calc as well as a Thornton Slide Rule (though not as comprehensive as the Thornton I had in the 1970s).

I still use the Casio claculator which I used at college, with the BIN, OCT, HEX, DEC facillity. Although I don't use number bases in calculation much these days I do use HEX numbers in filenames quite often. Back in college days I got so adept at using them that the idea stuck.

Along with this, I do have several other calculators, one being an old Binatone with LCD display and socket for external power. It runs batteries down pretty quickly.

Tracy