We used to program them to play Yankee Doodle.
Then came the first electronic calculator, by Friden ...
.. priced at ~ $1,200 as I recall.
>>He describes the white-hot excitement as teams pored over hand-drawings and worked on endless technical problems, using “slide-rules and advanced degrees” (there were no computers), knowing they were part of such a complicated space project. The intensity would increase as launch deadlines loomed and on the days when “the customer” — the CIA and later the Air Force — came for briefings. On at least one occasion, former President George H.W. Bush, who was then CIA director, flew into Danbury for a tour of the plant.<<
Slide rules? I can imagine what the napkins scribbled on, at the local coffee shop looked like! Top secret.
It truly used to be this way.
By 1980, TI made the slide rule obsolete with hand held scientific calculators.
Slide rules? I can imagine what the napkins scribbled on, at the local coffee shop looked like! Top secret.
You and I can laugh at that thought now. But I did know a young lady at the time whose primary job was a ‘minder’ and after every luncheon or dinner her ‘principal’ was at found her gathering up the napkins including the expensive linen ones.
She was also having to write out checks to reimburse the restaurants for confiscating them. She told some very funny stories that were made even funnier by all of the censoring she had to do. Half the time she would throw her hands up and just say,’well you just had to be there..’.
Ah yes, The cold war a damn serious yet funny and farcical time... I’m dating myself but in some ways I preferred that time to now. At least I didn’t have to deal with the TSA then or carry an electronic leash among other things so common to today.
We used to program them to play Yankee Doodle.
Then came the first electronic calculator, by Friden ...
.. priced at ~ $1,200 as I recall.