Thank goodnes they don't make curved leaches

jim nolan · Post by **jim nolan** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:06 pm

Very funny boys. I sold my first electronic calculator for 1995.00 in 1970. It weighed about 30 pounds. I made 40% life was good. Now for a buck, you can get one that has square root, and every thing else. Then, I got in the bar business. I think I'll go back to dollar calculators.

Chip Hindes · Post by **Chip Hindes** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 5:48 am

Mark wrote:Long before the Texas Instruments calculator with the red LCD.

Whatcha talkin' 'bout, red LCDs, youngster? These calculators had LEDs; usually red but there were some with other colors; ate batteries quickly if you inadvertantly left them on. LCDs came much much later.

Catigale · Post by **Catigale** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 9:29 am

There was a big environmental movement to LCDs in the late 1970s due to LED poisoning

Mark Prouty · Post by **Mark Prouty** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 10:42 am

Chip Hindes wrote: Whatcha talkin' 'bout, red LCDs, youngster? These calculators had LEDs; usually red but there were some with other colors; ate batteries quickly if you inadvertantly left them on. LCDs came much much later.

Ah, thats correct Light Emmitting Diode.

waternwaves · Post by **waternwaves** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 4:00 pm

hmmm,

And I saved all those Nixie tubes, for something..... that old burroughs was such a good numeric calculator....lol (boat heater perhaps)

However, some of the rest of you must have used the old Picket stylus mechanical pocket adders that were used with your slide rules.....lol

Well, If I could get a generator on board to power the damn nixies..

Chip Hindes · Post by **Chip Hindes** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:48 pm

I almost mentioned nixies myself but we were talking handheld. Most of the stuff I remember that had nixies needed a couple of pretty big guys to haul it around as well as its own dedicated 3kW, 400 Hz generator.

Mark Prouty · Post by **Mark Prouty** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 2:52 am

waternwaves wrote:hmmm,

And I saved all those Nixie tubes, for something..... that old burroughs was such a good numeric calculator....lol (boat heater perhaps)

Ah, ya got me. Had to look that one up.

Nixie tubes

Catigale · Post by **Catigale** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 4:21 am

Boy,you guys ARE old....I remember joking about how obsolete Nixie tubes were while we listened to our 8 track player programming our PDP-11......

waternwaves · Post by **waternwaves** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 2:28 pm

Cat

Your comment "Boy,you guys ARE old...." hey Not quite a fossil yet....., I did get rid of that teletype with paper tape punch in the garage.... at least 15 years ago...

I cant be too old..... I started sailing with the I-14's , and those have only been around since the teens and twentys I think....lol.

Lets just go with an assumed age of 35........ sounds better that way....

Catigale · Post by **Catigale** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 4:52 pm

Yikes waternwaves....

I remember feeding punchtape into that cream coloured console to launch the bootstrap program on our Nicolet....

The incredible part of all this is the pace of obsolescence.

At Buffalo Engineering, when I entered, all freshman engineers had to run a Fortran program problem set submitted on punch cards. This was a class of 1000 kids or so. There was a room of punchkey machines to accomodate the load of students each week punching problem sets.

Four years later the last punchkey machine was taken off campus - the PC had hit....

MacGregorSailors.com

MacGregorSailors.com

Thank goodnes they don't make curved leaches