Vintage Calculators

[ppppenguin]

I dimly remember sseing an HP35 for the first time when a friend of my maths teacher took me round parts of Imperial College where he was a lecturer. The HP35 was locked into a sturdy cradle to prevent it growing legs. ISTR a price c£200 around 1972. Using the most sensible comparator, that's about £2500 today.
https://www.measuringworth.com/calculato...evalue.php

That same visit was also the reason I went to Imperial, but not because of the HP35

[peter scott]

Some of my colleagues at HP did get "company calculators" (HP35s) but I (the Luddite) stuck with my trusty slide rule and was probably the last to be using one in the lab. When I eventually relented the iconic 35 was "old hat" and I got a less glamorous but programmable HP25.



Peter

[ppppenguin]

I missed overall best mark, and the Zeppler Prize by a frustrating 1%. I was at the time really p****d off by that.

Craig

I  scraped my 1st at Imperial. There were 13 1st class degrees awarded that year in Elec Eng, out of about 100 in the class. There were 12 prizes. I didn't get one. I suspect I had been marked down in a particular exam by a lecturer with whom I didn't get on at all. I also suspect the moderators marked me back up to get the 1st. I know I was top of class list in the final year extended project. This accounted for 12.5% of the entire degree.

All seems so long ago - graduated in 1978.

[Nick]

The Sinclair Scientific that I bought when they first came out is on the "history" shelf in my office. It still works.

Craig & I both went to Southampton to study EE at about the same time...

The main electronics building was called the Zepler Building, named after the first professor and founder of the of EE department, Eric Zepler.

As a young student there, working late one night, I met a very aged Eric Zepler wandering around the corridors, but I didn't recognise him until he pointed to a painting on the wall... Embarrassing.

The only prize I won was the IBM UK prize for the best undergraduate thesis. It was basically a small amount of money and a job offer at IBM Havant.

I declined.

[Craig]

That is really interesting and a trip down memory lane! I was there from '74 to '77, and remember the red brick Zeppler building well. But I never met the man himself.

I have a story about IBM. After my electronics degree I decided that going to work wasn't yet for me and stayed on to do a PhD in laser physics. This was on high power pulsed lasers. IBM got in touch at one point asking if we could help them solve a problem with a colour monitor development. The switched mode supply would randomly die, and they suspected it was triggered by flash-over between electrodes in the neck of the CRT. We said sure we could help. They arrived with two of these monster hernia-inducing monitors, and I triggered controlled flashover by focusing my laser through the CRT neck onto an electrode. First pulse - bang went the supply. Same with the second monitor. They went away having had it confirmed that their idea was right.

They came back with two monitors with modified supplies, which I also blew up for them.

Next time they arrived there was a delegation including managers. New modification has been carried out, which they said was a robust fix. I blew them up too. And then right in front of me a massive barney happened between management and engineers - at that point I tactically withdrew. They did not come back a fourth for me to annihilate more monitors for them.

Craig

[Nick]

That is really interesting and a trip down memory lane! I was there from '74 to '77, and remember the red brick Zeppler building well. But I never met the man himself.

You must be a few years older than me, but our paths probably did cross. I also spent a year there working for Professor John Betts (we discussed this by email a while ago!).

The picture of Eric Zepler I was referring to hung in the entrance foyer (if you could have called it a foyer!) of the Zepler Building, right opposite the main door...

Zepler came across as a really nice gentle guy. I have no idea what he was doing in the building at that hour - maybe he was at a social do at the university and decided to visit his namesake?

Whatever the reason, I'm glad I met him - a true pioneer of RF design.

The building was a bit of a horror story of narrow corridors, old cream-painted brickwork and dodgy infrastructure. I loved it though

Talking of cigars - you may remember then then head of the EE department - an imposing character with a large frame and follicly challenged... he lit a cigar up in the machine room where the Modcomp and Honeywell machines were. When I politely indicated the No Smoking signs, I got a swift put-down - "It's a privilege of being HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT"...

Them was the days...

[ppppenguin]

Craig, I love your story about causing open warfare between managers and engineers. Usually the engineers are right but don't have the authority and managers are wrong but behave badly. This was the reverse.

[Craig]

That is really interesting and a trip down memory lane! I was there from '74 to '77, and remember the red brick Zeppler building well. But I never met the man himself.

You must be a few years older than me, but our paths probably did cross. I also spent a year there working for Professor John Betts (we discussed this by email a while ago!).

The picture of Eric Zepler I was referring to hung in the entrance foyer (if you could have called it a foyer!) of the Zepler Building, right opposite the main door...

Zepler came across as a really nice gentle guy. I have no idea what he was doing in the building at that hour - maybe he was at a social do at the university and decided to visit his namesake?

Whatever the reason, I'm glad I met him - a true pioneer of RF design.

The building was a bit of a horror story of narrow corridors, old cream-painted brickwork and dodgy infrastructure. I loved it though

Talking of cigars - you may remember then then head of the EE department - an imposing character with a large frame and follicly challenged... he lit a cigar up in the machine room where the Modcomp and Honeywell machines  were. When I politely indicated the No Smoking signs, I got a swift put-down - "It's a privilege of being HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT"...

Them was the days...

Henry K?

Poor John Betts I believe died in a car accident in his classic car. He was a fine lecturer - I still have his book Signal Processing, Modulation and Noise on my bookshelf.

I well remember the Modcomp IV. At least it was easier to use than the ICL mainframe in the maths building, complete with punched card programming. If you anticipated using the full 32kB of core store you had to submit written permission from your supervisor. It could take two days from handing in a bunch of cards to getting the results as a line printer doorstep. There were teleprinter terminals, although they were reserved. Although a mate worked out how to log on, and then issue a control sequence that initiated a core dump. A hacker 1976 style.

Fast forward to today, and I felt aggrieved when a spice simulation took as much as a minute to produce intermodulation spectra.

Craig

[valvekits]

The only prize I won was the IBM UK prize for the best undergraduate thesis. It was basically a small amount of money and a job offer at IBM Havant.

I declined.

I wonder if you missed a trick there.
I visited a small research lab at IBM Havant in the early 80s and it looked like a nice place to work. People were very friendly (some claimed IBM was an acronym for I’ve been to Mullard) and they seemed to be doing cutting edge technology.

[Nick]

The only prize I won was the IBM UK prize for the best undergraduate thesis. It was basically a small amount of money and a job offer at IBM Havant.

I declined.

I wonder if you missed a trick there.
I visited a small research lab at IBM Havant in the early 80s and it looked like a nice place to work. People were very friendly (some claimed IBM was an acronym for I’ve been to Mullard) and they seemed to be doing cutting edge technology.

Nah.

They were all wearing grey slacks and light blue shirts. It was a mould that you had to fit and that wasn't me - I'm not a corporate type guy... I did work for DEC in various countries - they were far more engineer-focused...