I thought heaven had come down to earth when the first hand held calculator went on the market.
My first year of college was in 1973 — the year they eliminated slide rules in Chemistry. By then a four function TI calculator cost 80 bucks, but I found a used one for half that. The next year four function digital watches were available for five bucks.
The world of mathematics came alive.
And now with MSExcel...I could live in this math world and never get tired or stop learning.
All that said, I do believe that math is God's handiwork...and His gift to me and others.
Math is too perfect not to have a Creator.
It isn't random. It is designed...and carefully--perfectly--so.
The first calculator I ever saw was in a psychology class around 1971. The professor who had just arrived from England said he was surprised to find the department had one.
He passed it around for all of us to see. I have no idea what the functions were but he said it was very expensive.
I think it was around the size of a hymnal.
In 1974 I bought a basic scientific calculator from Sears for $69. It was reduced. It still works and has beautiful green numbers which are easy on the eye.
One day in the Student Book Store (about 1972) I saw an HP 35, and asked to handle it.
Clerk did not want to let a pony-tailed, bare-footed, scummy student touch that $400 (1972$) item, but she did (with a sneer).
I clicked a few keys, saw the SIN and COS (and more) and realizing the computational power, said, “That’s cool” and handed it back.
I continued using my 6-inch Post Versalog for my student Engineering calcs.
With my first job, they got us a couple of HP 35’s. We had one with the ‘error’, and had it fixed.
“Early HP-35s had some errors - bugs! A bug in ex meant that typing: “2.02 ln ex” gives the result 2. instead of 2.02 but this was soon removed - indeed HP sent a recall notice to owners of early HP-35 units to get this fixed. An early HP-35 with this bug is worth more to a collector than one without! Another bug is that the sine of some small angles comes out completely wrong - this was dealt with after the other bug, so later versions have neither bug.”
One day, many years later, it was turned in as Govt. surplus.
Wonder where I put my slide rule. My dad, who was a computer programmer (late 60s through late 90s) showed me how to use it. We used them in science class, too. We were not allowed to use calculators. (Graduated high school ‘77)