The Mizzou EE Department had a 360 which we used. The ME Department had an ancient and decrepit Marchant calculator without an instruction manual. It was totally inscrutable:
I took a college slide rule class around 1968. I still have the cheap plastic slide rule I used in class.
Around 1972 I had a psychology class taught by a British soldier who had been teaching soldiers in the desert before coming to Troy.
He did not like the equipment he was supplied saying he had better stuff in the desert. He did admit to one exception and he was really surprised that Troy had it.
It was an electronic calculator around a foot by maybe 10 inches. He passed it around the class then showed us how it worked. That was the first calculator I had ever seen or even heard of.
In the early 70s I fell in love with an HP-9100 the physics department just got. Then some kid came in after Christmas sporting a brand-new just introduced HP-35 programmable calculator (the first one, J$395 in 1972 real dollars) on his belt. Several of us gave serious thought to mugging him. It would do almost everything the desktop machine did, and worked the same way (RPN). We couldn’t see how it could be much better than that...
In the early 70’s my (JR High) math teacher brought a giant hand held calculator that her husband used at NASA/JSC. It would add, subtract, multiply and divide only.
She left it on her desk and left the room and someone stole it. An announcement went over the PA that it was federal property and the FBI had been called and was enroute. It was found soon after.
You can buy a more powerful one today for under a dollar.
The Mizzou EE Department had a 360 which we used. The ME Department had an ancient and decrepit Marchant calculator without an instruction manual. It was totally inscrutable: