A Fantastic Addition!
- Thread starter woodsroad
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I think that I recall seeing that advertised on late, late, late night television, along with the Ronco Glass-Froster, back in 1981!
Q: Whatever you do, 007, please don't push this button!
007: Why? What does it do?
Q: Just don't push it...at least not until you are several miles away; Her Majesty is still rather testy concerning the frightful damage that you did here the last time that you ignored my warning.
007: Why? What does it do?
Q: Just don't push it...at least not until you are several miles away; Her Majesty is still rather testy concerning the frightful damage that you did here the last time that you ignored my warning.
"This one feeds the cat, this one flushes the commode and this one orders more Mixture 79"
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The Calculighter cost $90 in then money, meaning $335 in today money.
(Not as much as I would have guessed, actually. Only ten years earlier, a butt-simple four function LED pocket calculator cost $400 in then money)
(Not as much as I would have guessed, actually. Only ten years earlier, a butt-simple four function LED pocket calculator cost $400 in then money)
In 1970, my father had one of the Friden/Hitachi desktop calculators in his lab. Cost at the time was close to $1200, which would be over $10k today. Nixie tube display and four memories. I remember it because it was so precious it had it's own room in the lab and in the late 70's, when it was already a worthless brick, he let me dismantle it.
Nice, I wonder if this ones available with a lighter. I smoked cigarettes back when I wore it, would’ve been cool.
In the late ’60s/very early ’70s, my brothers, Tim and Erwin, appropriated my Nerf sponge ball. They took a metal coat hanger, some thin white string from my parents’ Chinese laundry, black masking tape, a block of wood, and two nails, and fashioned a basketball hoop with a realistic tapered net, that attached via the nails in the wood block that went in the holes of the curtain sliders that were mounted in a rail on the underside of the archway between the living room and dining room. This was a year or two before Nerf came out with their Nerfoop. They created a fantasy basketball league and kept stats for a team called the Chickamauga Chickens. We were all assigned fictitious characters—Tim was Zeke Bartkowski, and I was Isaku Izamora, aka “The Zippy Nip” (which would never fly today)—Erwin was the team captain whose nickname was “Playmaker” (I can’t recall the given name, but will ask). A particular pattern on the Oriental rug in the living room was the foul line. We played full games and marked the shots in a ledger Tim created that had Letraset press type on the coloured cardboard covers. To keep accurate stats, Tim spent what seemed like an exorbitant amount of money on a Bowmar Brain. They used this to keep track of all of the shooting stats. Thank you for reviving some fond memories.
Zippy Nip.
Oh, now you’ve done it, Jeff. Never should have let that one out!
-Dan
(Yappy Yid)
I actually caught myself muttering, “Well, I’ll be … “
Multiplication, subtraction, division, and percentage, too!
That brings back a memory. When I was in college I did work study. The head of the department had me help him clean out a storage area. There were big calculators similar to that one, but with fewer functions, and seven segment display. We were using HP scientific handheld so they seemed comically huge for the limited functions. There was also a bunch of vacuum tube o-scopes, and other interesting, obsolete stuff. We threw most it in a dumpster.The department head was kinda choked up. He was teaching there when he helped his predecessor purchase it as the latest and greatest.
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That is super cool!
In the late 1980's, I was never without my Casio Calculator watch at work. (that daughter is now 41)
and I made sure my work desk always had a Monroe desktop calculator. These things were about $400 or so. Finally cheap $5 calculators from K-Mart rendered them obsolete.
In the late 1980's, I was never without my Casio Calculator watch at work. (that daughter is now 41)
and I made sure my work desk always had a Monroe desktop calculator. These things were about $400 or so. Finally cheap $5 calculators from K-Mart rendered them obsolete.
Dang. This brings it back. In 1973, I started work in a civil engineering drawing office and at some point, an HP desktop calculator appeared, to be shared among ten of us. I think it cost about 8 months of my salary at the time. Considering the cost, HP had been dead stingy with mains cable and the damn thing was always at a stretch.
Naturally, this mug here managed to trip over the thing a few weeks in. Up flew the arithmetical wizzard, crash it went on the floor. Oh dear. Broken. Nobody could look me in the eye for ages after that; it was still away for repair when I moved on a few months later. Oops.
Naturally, this mug here managed to trip over the thing a few weeks in. Up flew the arithmetical wizzard, crash it went on the floor. Oh dear. Broken. Nobody could look me in the eye for ages after that; it was still away for repair when I moved on a few months later. Oops.
This reminds me of my parents. I never thought it odd, but my wife saw it when we were first dating “What’s with your mom and dad waxing poetic about old lab instruments?”
They both worked in a hospital lab. Actually they met each other there. When they first started working, during and just after WWII, it was all manual bench work with a few specialized instruments or glassware, but eventually there were machines that made their work faster and more accurate. For them it was about the people’s health and lives that depended on their work. My parents developed an emotional attachment to the machines that they relied upon to help their patients. Names like the Technicon Autoanalyzer, IL Flame Photometer, Beckman, Coulter-S and the much venerated SMA 12/60 are forever part of my childhood. Later on, I worked in my dad’s lab repairing and maintaining these machines. I still get the warm fuzzies when I see an old Barnstead still on Facebook Marketplace!
That is great nostalgia. My almost 40 year old Beckman multimeter broke last year. The dial broke off and I couldn’t see a good way to repair it, so I bought an inexpensive Klein to replace it. It had a good run. My department head took over when the previous department head died. They were good friends. We threw away cabinets full of his old course work. He kept saying I‘m sorry as we threw it in the dumpster.
