CALCULATING REVOLUTION-ANOTHER GARAGE DISCOVERY I was a brand new teacher in the fall of 1973, excited about sharing my knowledge of history with young students. I wasnt so excited at the end of the first six weeks when it came time to doing grades and report cards. I remember spending the entire weekend calculating grades by hand on paper....and that was about 30 grades per student times 150 students! That was not fun! When I saw an ad for one of the worlds first electronic, hand-held calculators, I knew that it was something I had to have...whatever the cost! I paid just over $100.00 for it (thats $548 in todays money!) My yearly teacher salary in 1973 was $6,700 with take home pay of just $404 a month. This calculator was one fourth of my monthly salary! I never regretted the purchase....and I never threw the calculator away. My Summit K16 calculator...see photo...is a great reminder of how far weve come since the slide rule days (which I had used to get through my college math classes)! In 1977, I retired my Summit and purchased a TI-1000....which I also still have....for less than $10.00 (see photo). This mean machine could even do percentages! I didnt use this one long, however. The following year, the new, super thin LCD calculators hit the market, and my old LED models became technological dinosaurs.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 17:57:55 +0000
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