I remember you had to put it together.
I never got the hang of it though. Everytime I inputted something...It came back 42.
Posted on 08/31/2004 10:04:24 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
;-)
D'OH!
Just do it in a mirror.
Sam Publiuski
I have wanted a Curta calculator for 45 yrs.
http://home.teleport.com/~gregsa/curta/
How old is yours? Mine dates from 1947, let's see, that must be 57 years - - I still use it once in a while. For some reason while I was in school I picked up a spare indicator assembly (what was that thing called anyway?) and for a while had two of them on the rule. No real advantage, but it really made people think I was a young genius at calculations.
Agreed. The HP48 is just too convenient for me, though.
Sales crashed, and production virtually ceased in the early '70s. But old habits die hard, so people continued to use slide rules for a while. The early calculators were expensive, so lots of students stayed with what they already owned. As did their teachers. But not for long.
Second: Then, in the early 1970s Hewlett Packard came out with the first commercial calculator, the HP-35, signaling an end to the slide rule’s dominance in scientific computing.
Is this accurate? I have this haunting feeling that Sinclair was first (or maybe they were just much cheaper.)
HP wasn't the first. But theirs was the first really functional, affordable, and thus wildly successful calculator. Or so I believe. I'm not well informed about the early history of calculators. You can check this out: The Museum of HP Calculators. They have a link on the HP-35.
There was a lot of competition between HP and TI. HP used the Reverse Polish notation whereas TI followed the more common practice used in all cheap 4-function calculators.
There was a story that the CEO of TI (anyone who worked there will remember his name) once caught an employee using an HP calculator. He did the "hurl" maneuver with the poor guy's private property too.
(I don't recognize half of the constants or formula I wrote on the back, sigh ...)
Just an aside to this article. Both the first and last man to set foot on the moon (Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan) were Purdue grads.
I remember them. I sold them a few old HP calculators and modules when I retired.
My fav at the time was the Ti SR-50 :-)
Starving student. I so wanted an Hp-65!!!
Have an Hp-65 now as a keepsake.
I remember you had to put it together.
I never got the hang of it though. Everytime I inputted something...It came back 42.
Just a note that Phillip Pullman's trilogy, though admittedly well written, is very against religion, and, according to the author himself, written to be an "anti-Narnia". Parents especially need to be aware of this as they are quite popular with librarians who run Young Adult book discussion groups, and also some English teachers.
Yes, I have read them, yes they are mostly good writing, no, I'm not saying they should go unread. People do need to be aware of an author's intentions, though, and I fear Christian conservatives have let these books go under the radar, so preoccupied they have been with Harry Potter; they may not be aware of the dangers contained within them to children ill-prepared to deal with the anti-God premise so heavily emphasized.
I haven't finished and can't judge the anti-God perspective. There is more than a bit of anti-church perspective, however most of this is related to practices which the church has abandoned. I'll see when I finish.
There is an interesting web site (bridgetothestars.net) that has a parody interview with a hollywood producer planning a movie of the series.
Thanks for the ping!
Yes, 42 is the answer, but what question were you asking it? (My apologies if you've never read the Hitchhikers' Guide Trilogy)
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