Nostalgia is it a thing of the past?

Here's one, for us of a certain age :D
A good old time waster in math lessons (y)



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Tori_T said:
Or green numerals. VFD's predated the seven segment LED.
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I only remember green numerals from ancient computer screens, not calculators. I don't think I have ever seen a calculator with green numerals.

Cobra was only pointing out what others are likely to remember I guess. I wonder if he had the same fun with his chalk and slate or his stone tablet.
One day someone will discover his cave paintings.
;)
 
Tori_T said:
Or green numerals. VFD's predated the seven segment LED.
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Or blue. I was once lent a calculator with 1/2 inch fluorescent display. I thought that was very pretty but I had to give it back. :sulk:
 
nilagin said:
I don't think I have ever seen a calculator with green numerals.
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VFD calculators owned by my parents in the early '70's:
Found them.
The Memory Devices Memory 808MD: My Fathers. Built like a tank, weighed a ton, rechargable, probably expensive; I was forbidden to touch this one.
MemoryDevices808MD.jpg

The Decimo Vatman Mini: My Mothers. Much lighter construction, took 2x AA batteries. I was allowed to play with this one if I asked first.
DecimoVatmanMini.jpg
 
Cobra said:
Here's one, for us of a certain age :D
A good old time waster in math lessons (y)



View attachment 252294
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If you have an old-school scientific calculator then try displaying 1.145 to the power of 40. :giggle: Funny how we can remember stuff like that after all these years, but can't remember how to work out the area of a circle!
 
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Tori_T said:
VFD calculators owned by my parents in the early '70's:
Found them.
The Memory Devices Memory 808MD: My Fathers. Built like a tank, weighed a ton, rechargable, probably expensive; I was forbidden to touch this one.
View attachment 252329

The Decimo Vatman Mini: My Mothers. Much lighter construction, took 2x AA batteries. I was allowed to play with this one if I asked first.
View attachment 252332
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I remember them now, I had one. ;)
 
Cartus said:
Before electronic calculators became widely available, I remember having one of these...
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What is it with all this modern stuff?
This was mine (y)

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Cockney said:
I had one of these.
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Me too, but the wooden ones were far better for flicking ink soaked blotting paper at the black board (y)
 
Nod said:
Good luck with this^ using that v...
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I'd probably have more of a chance. :)
Several years ago I had to take a maths test as part of an assessment for a job I had applied for. I hadn't used a calculator in around 20yrs or so and after switching the thing on I spent a couple of minutes just staring at it blankly. Ended up switching it off and doing it all in my head. (Not that the questions were really that complicated). We had 30minutes to answer as many questions as possible. Lad next to me, using a calculator managed 25 questions and got all the answers right, another bloke answered 27 questions with the calculator but only got about 20 correct. I managed 24 correct out of 24 questions after my brain freeze at the beginning.
 
I found this on FB it made me chuckle ..

When I was a child
Pasta had not been invented.
Curry was a surname.
A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
All crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether
to put the salt on or not.
A Chinese chippy was a foreign carpenter.
Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever part of our
dinner.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Coffee was Camp, and came in a bottle.
Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
Only Heinz made beans.
Fish didn't have fingers in those days.
Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
Indian restaurants were only found in India.
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognised food.
"Kebab" was not even a word never mind a food.
Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded
as being white gold.
Prunes were medicinal.
Surprisingly muesli was readily available, it was called
cattle feed.
Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a
picture of a real one..
Water came out of the tap, if someone had suggested
bottling it and charging more than petrol for it they would
have become a laughing stock.
The one thing that we never ever had on our table in the
fifties .. was elbows!
 
What a difference 20( :p ) years made! Pretty much only the bottled water and the "all joints on the table will be carved" points held true by the time I was growing up getting older.
 
I was reminded of this thread again, after seeing the "Young pretender" thread called the bad old days.

Bread and dripping sarnies with a fight to see who got the jelly at the bottom of the basin (y)
 
...and we still have to use a circular slide rule when training to be a pilot and taking aviation exams in the UK (and elsewhere but in the USA I was allowed to use a calculator as well). Although tbh I was last involved in flying about 10 years ago, but I doubt it's changed
 
Lindsay56 said:
...and we still have to use a circular slide rule when training to be a pilot and taking aviation exams in the UK
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I suppose the idea is that calculators can run out of power but an E6B can't. Mind you, if you're the sort of person who would forget to check the charge in your calculator, how likely are you to check the slide rule's in your pocket? :naughty:
 
I think the justification is that you really need to understand the method of calculating things when you use a slide rule, whereas calculators can have programmed functions instead. I think that is a good justification really, and should apply in children's education still too
 
When I was at college I bought a calculator which cost £40, nearly three weeks wages. I still have it and it still works but these days you can probably get a similar one in a Pound shop. Until I got that one I had a cheaper one and when the batteries were running down it gave increasingly random answers but thankfully I always spotted what was happening.

I couldn't have done without a calculator, it could have all been done long hand but nowhere near as quickly. Looking back on those days once I got into work I never really needed the things I learned at college but at the time it all seemed more relevant than school and who won or lost a battle 600 years ago.
 
Lindsay56 said:
whereas calculators can have programmed functions instead. I think that is a good justification really, and should apply in children's education still too
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I can remember being told at school don't rely on calculators ( they were just becoming "available" )
You won't always have one handy :D
 
Never used a slide rule and calculators were kind of frowned upon at school. Rarely used a calculator at college during my apprenticeship. Most maths I did in my head and still do.
 
The calculators in this thread reminded me of my Casio graphical calculator. I came across it in the garage last week. Probably of no use to anybody given you can do calculations on smartphones and computers that are probably more accurate and faster. CFX-9850. I used to love that calculator. Could program it too.
 
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Somewhere I still have my Texas instruments SR-10.

I came across the user manual recently and receipt.......cost a small fortune back in 1974 for use doing my ONC in Medical Laboratory Sciences.........£55 odd!!?

PS in sixth form it was a slide rule as a follow on after using the much 'thumbed' book of log tables.
 
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Alan's comment about the price of calculators reminded of a conversation, around the time when the first calculators became available, between two friends.

One had paid around £40 for a calculator. The other said, "I'll buy one when the price comes down to a fiver.", to which the first one said, "That will never happen because they are just too complicated."

Dave
 
my first calculator came from tandy's in the mid 70's out of the bargain bin
it was a faulty return which cost a quid
the fault was one of the battery wires had come off which was an easy fix :)
i can't remember the true cost but i do remember it was well out of my price reach at the time, at a quid it was a couple of weeks pocket money

i still have one of these somewhere

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had a quick look for it but couldn't find it but i did find this :)

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it's a bit battered and the original strap perished long ago
need to put a new battery in it to see if it's still working
 
I remember the TV shops used to hate those watches; Saturday afternoon, and some kid would come along, switch the set in the window to Grandstand, and turn the volume up so the gathering crowd could hear the match commentary outside.
 
cosmicma said:
i still have one of these somewhere

SharpPC1211_1.jpg
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I had a version similar to that in the late 80s that could be programmed and included a simple printer. At the time I was department radiological protection supervisor (that sound a LOT more important than it really was) and I wrote a program to calculate Iodine 125 decay on it. I also had a casio scientific calculator in the following job (1990) that I kept with me in pretty much daily use, and only threw away earlier this year because it started giving random answers.
 
What about these? They could actually understand my writing!

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Cockney said:
What about these? They could actually understand my writing!
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Provided you could remember the Graffiti style for each character! I've still got a couple of these things in a drawer (a V and a Vx) but I haven't charged them for several years.
 
I remember having several pairs of shoes with the compass when I was a kid. The compass never lasted very long though.
 
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