Reply With QuoteI have a 70's Commodore and a smaller Sinclair with a nice purple display. Both at work so no pics but both in regular use although I have noticed that I've started using my phone more.
Mr. spaceslug posted this in the Friday thread today:
And proper vintage they are. I had a LED watch back in the day, from memory it was horridly unreliable and ate batteries. I've no idea what happened to it, it must have gone in the bin at some point.Originally Posted by spaceslug
A retro Commodore LED day today....
I do, still, however have this - not used regularly, but still functioning some 38 years after I bought it, secondhand, from a fellow schoolmate (who I think had inherited it from his Dad..)
Anyone else still have one lurking in the back of a drawer somewhere? Casio, Sinclair, WHY?
Cheers,
Plug
I have a 70's Commodore and a smaller Sinclair with a nice purple display. Both at work so no pics but both in regular use although I have noticed that I've started using my phone more.
<< paging mister curta, paging mister curta , report to the thread please >>
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
I bought a HP scientific Calculator in 1970 when embarking on A levels and it was £37 , How much is that in today's money ??? Wish I still had it ... Just managed to scrape a Physics A Level tho'
Reporting in...
That is a fabulous watch/calculator combo!
I do have a large collection of vintage mechanical calculators, it is my main interest after travel and - I'm sorry to say here - above watches.
I am fortunate to have five Curta Calculators representing the main variations in production models taking pride of place in in the collection. A very early Type I with pin sliders, only produced in the earliest years, is the pick of the crop. I have two further Type I and two Type II models. They are all in good working order, and were built to last so the 1968 Type I stays in my office where it sees regular use. Here are the older four:
However, other than a modern (in my eyes) HP11C, I only have one vintage electronic calculator, a nixie tube Anita dating from 1971 and still in full working order:
710 77345
710 0553
58008
Got one of these lurking in the loft somewhere:
My parents have a couple of mechanical adding machines.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
I've got a modest collection which includes some nice early Sinclairs. However these two are probably the oldest and definitely amongst my favourites.
I bought one of the Sinclair Sovereign steel bodied models. It was designed to be a man's accessory like your lighter and pen. It had no auto off and ran through button batteries furiously. I put it away in a drawer after the third lot. I couldn't afford to run it!
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/1...ould-make.html
I had a Prinztronic (from Dixons).
Had an impressive green electroluminescent display (same as nixie tubes?).
Very hungry on batteries (4 AA?)!
Corroded battery compartments are, perhaps unsurprisingly, very commonly found in this particular model.
Last time I looked, which I have to say was some years ago, the Sovereigns were fetching decent prices. If yours is a clean one it may be worth digging it out of the drawer and seeing if it still works.
Lovely to see these. My Mum still has an old LED calculator at home somewhere, a Sharp, I think. I have a couple of solar-powered LCD calculators that I bought in 1985, they still work fine and really, they aren't much different from what you'd expect from a basic calculator purchased in 2015. The display's pretty much the same, so are the size, the weight, the buttons and so on. No noticeable difference in operation, either. I guess the ordinary, basic calculator reached an evolutionary plateau a long time ago, like sharks and ants.
The first calculator I ever saw was one my Dad brought home from work one day in the early '70s. It was about half the size of a typewriter and hummed when you plugged it into the mains and switched it on. It had Nixie tubes. My brother and I were fascinated by it.
I think I recognise one of those Curta calculators! :-)
That is a fabulous watch/calculator combo!
I do have a large collection of vintage mechanical calculators, it is my main interest after travel and - I'm sorry to say here - above watches.
I am fortunate to have five Curta Calculators representing the main variations in production models taking pride of place in in the collection. A very early Type I with pin sliders, only produced in the earliest years, is the pick of the crop. I have two further Type I and two Type II models. They are all in good working order, and were built to last so the 1968 Type I stays in my office where it sees regular use. Here are the older four:
However, other than a modern (in my eyes) HP11C, I only have one vintage electronic calculator, a nixie tube Anita dating from 1971 and still in full working order:
Beautifully engineered machines.
Hahaha
There are some great memories of old calculators here, wish I had kept some of mine from the 70's
I used to have one of these, my Dad used to use it at the bank and he brought it home for me to play with after it went a bit crazy. I used to love printing the numbers on the till roll
I'm wearing one today
I remember well the first job I had in London, when I first left school, when I commuted from Rochester to work for an insurance company as a trainee actuary. All the calculations then required a full knowledge of how to work one of these Facit machines and the office had about fifty of us working, beavering away at them like something out of Dickens... I lasted a few months and then gave up and joined the army..
I don't collect them, and it isn't so very old, but I have a HP 10C that I got new in the 80s. It still works.
I've not been entirely happy with any notation other than RPN since then. Although, admittedly, the phone/tablet calculator app I use for simple calculations (MyScript Calculator) is infix. This is because the app does handwriting recognition, so one can just draw the formulae on the screen and it completes it. Sadly, the app is infix only.
Best wishes,
Bob
OK. If we're going to start on the mechanical stuff.
It's surprising how natural RPN feels once you've got used to the idea. I was amused to find that the scripting language embedded in the reference Bitcoin software is RPN based and often described as 'being like Forth'.
More reliable I'm sure than the Microsoft and actuarial modelling software that we use nowadays. I like the Dickens image... to work for an insurance company as a trainee actuary. All the calculations then required a full knowledge of how to work one of these Facit machines and the office had about fifty of us working, beavering away at them like something out of Dickens... I lasted a few months and then gave up and joined the army..
My only calculators are my Hewlett Packard 12C (with RPN) and 21S models from the 90s; not old, but still used daily.
Here's my old work calculator - it was the bees knees in the early 80s.
I have one of these from 1975. The chip does the calculation iteratively and you see the result quickly rack up on the display in a fraction of a second. However if you do 1 divided by zero it tries to do the operation but never completes so the display just counts up super fast for ever!
The one that started it all off, a gift from my dad who spotted my fascination with vintage mechanical equipment whilst I was still at school. An ADM-Schubert pin wheel calculator from the mid 1960s.
I've amassed a fair few inexpensive Addiator type pocket calculators over the years, these date from the 1920s to 1960s. One side is used for addition and the other for subtraction. The stylus advances each column by the number to be added or subtracted, with a mechanical carry to the next column. Simple but effective. Some of these are for pre-decimal currency and were popular with market traders.
Here's an American made Addometer.
A Danish Contex (note the 'half keyboard', to enter a '7' you would press '3' followed by '4').
And here's a very English Fowler's Long Scale. Basically a logarithmic slide rule, and very compact.
I first heard about the Curta calculator in a radio interview with Alex Bellos. The story of Curt Herzstark developing his ideas whilst in Buchenwald, his survival and the eventual establishment of a factory in Liechtenstein was fascinating. It was the first four-function pocket calculator and they were considered to be the best portable calculators for more than two decades.
After I saw one in the excellent National Technical Museum in Prague, I felt compelled to track one down. Things kind of snowballed from there.
Small enough to fit in a pocket, extremely versatile and more reliable than early electronic calculators which were prone to failure if jolted. For this reason they were particularly popular amongst car rally contestants and pilots.
Normally supplied in a metal (and later plastic) canister, a few were issued with custom made field cases for outdoor use. This Type II was supplied with a leather pouch, probably for a surveyor.
Matthew
Last edited by Mr Curta; 7th November 2015 at 22:57.
Those Curta's really are beautiful objects Matthew, i've never seen them before. Could you explain briefly how (and what) calculations would be made on them? Thanks!
There's some fantastic stuff on display here.
You probably can't remember how much you paid for it back then, but I recently picked this up from a local Poundland/Pound shop for their standard price - one pound sterling.Here's my old work calculator - it was the bees knees in the early 80s.
Judging by the similarity of the functions offered I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had a copy of the same chip design inside.
They really are functional objects of beauty, which makes them particularly satisfying. In use there is another level, feeling the gears mesh and seeing the numbers turn on the output registers (particularly in subtraction mode) is delightful.
The machine is capable of many types of calculation, it is difficult to explain the method without diagrams but a transcript of the manual is here:
http://www.vcalc.net/cu-man2.htm
However, a visual demonstration is best. Over to Mr Bellos:
Shinsaku Hiura has uploaded some excellent videos of more complex functions being calculated. Here is the square root of 5:
It looks convoluted, and is, but remember that this was long before portable electronic calculators existed, and electronic computers capable of such calculations filled a room.
Cheers, Matthew
Hear hear
I have a couple of vintage Calculator watches:
I have an old LED Commodore calculator too somewhere.
I'm also an advocate of RPN. My Anita 1011 LSI is postfix notation, as is the HP-11C of course. I was pleased to find several RPN calculator apps available.
I liked Imperials. I still have one in a drawer, waiting for me to re-attach one of the battery contacts. http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/imperial.html
Same with me, except I bought a 16C - programmer's model then a couple of 34Cs an HP41CV for peanuts in the chinatown district of SF when I was over there in the early 90s. There are a few RPM calculator apps knocking around, but I prefer real keys (and large displays) so I often dig one out of a drawer for some sums.
-- Tim
I've never seen those Curta calculators before but I would love one now :)
My parents have some Wedgwood plates?
What a wonderful thing the Curta is, thanks for posting the links.
Last edited by number2; 9th November 2015 at 01:56.
Bought in 1985 and still on original batteries !!
I have one of these, boxed.
And I use one of these daily - FX100 College.
Call that a slide rule, mate? You want to get yourself one of these:OK. If we're going to start on the mechanical stuff.
It does cube roots, antilogs, tangents, mantissas, least squares regressions, and a surprisingly drinkable cup of tea. Needless to say, I never use it. It's there in case civilisation collapses, and I need to calculate how long my tinned food supplies will last.
In our main maths room I used to look at those with abject horror. Took me two goes to pass my 'O' Level; I stood no chance trying one of those.
I bought this in 1977 for use in the stats portion of my psychology studies. Still going. Possibly the same batteries; they're ancient!
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That's certainly some colossus. However, these days I find my 6" portable to be a more practical alternative.
Just found this in my office:
Surprisingly it still works perfectly.
I got it as a leaving present when I was 21 so that makes it 31 years old. Still on original battery.
I know it's irrelevant to the thread but from the slide rule, B&O designed Beomaster 1200 after one of their engineers was having a lunchbreak and was looking at his sliderule... and designed this classic.... I would think a fair few mathematical calculations were used!OK. If we're going to start on the mechanical stuff.
Last edited by Rod; 25th August 2016 at 13:05.
Back in my day, that was about as much entertainment you could have with 'technology'. These days kids can stream live feeds of Japanese women doing all kinds of kinky stuff with eels and their orifices. What a time to be alive.
I had one of those in my collection a few years back. I do have to correct you slightly though Rod...I know it's irrelevant to the thread but from the slide rule, B&O designed Beomaster 1200 after one of their engineers was having a lunchbreak and was looking at his sliderule... and designed this classic.... I would think a fair few mathematical calculations were used!
Jacob Jensen first used the slide rule concept on the Beolab 5000 system comprising of the Beomaster 5000 tuner and the Beolab 5000 amplifier. All later B&O products using this interface, such as the 1200, owed a debt to the Beolab 5000 system which first pioneered it :)
I'll add my latest arrival to this thread, this very compact and nicely engineered Alpina pinwheel calculator from 1961.
To save anyone else like me who isn't an audiophile having to google it as well, here's what they look like.
^^^^ I used to have a set of those too... fabulous quality.
Me too!
The collection got thinned sadly, and I sold mine last year. Built like tanks and sound fantastic if properly serviced.
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