HeathKit Calculator

[Keith Rowland]

GM fellow nostalgia buffs:

Couldn't help but add a few words about calculating aids of the past.  I
remember that all of us engineering majors at Georgia Tech back in the
late 40s and early 50s took great pride in going about everywhere with
the biggest slide rules that we could afford hanging from our belts.
Sort of like the Old West in the movies...the guy with the biggest, most
awkward slide rule was top gun!

Then, for many years, during my time as a broadcast consulting engineer,
I always had that thing dangling at my side on a job.  It always
impressed the non-technical types at the radio or TV station where you
were fixing what they had broken.

Then later, when the great, expensive Hewlitt-Packard programmable
jobbie came out, all of us who could afford one lugged it around...some
guys even carried both their old slide rule AND the H-P for a while...I
think it may have been that some of them carried the H-Pfor the sake of
appearances, but still used the slip-stick, because they couldn't figure
out how to use the H-P!

Now, as you point out, for a few bucks you can get a little bitty thing
that will do more than any of the old devices, and it's so small that
one needs a magnifying glass to see what it's telling you...!!!

73,

Keith

Radman wrote:

> >>>> Anyone remember the HeathKit
> calculator kit? It was a four function,
> LED
> readout kit based (I think) on a Bomar
> design, sold about 1973 or
> thereabouts for $99.95 if I remember
> correctly.
>
> Heath fans,
>
> I remember the 70s calculator era, but
> not this particular Heath model. I
> bought the TI SR-50 for $150 (in 1973)
> and was overjoyed -- it would do trig
> functions, logs and roots ;) ! Did you
> know that the first HP calculator --
> the HP-35 -- cost $395 (US) when first
> introduced? I believe these two "early
> birds" are finding their way into some
> of the technology museums around the
> world. The equivalent amount of
> computing power and battery life can be
> found today -- at your corner drug
> store for about $15.00. But, they don't
> have the romance of the past, now do
> they ;) ? If you want to explore the
> early pioneering years of calculators
> you might enjoy the following sites:
>
> "X number" Calculator page -- URL:
> http://www.dotpoint.com/xnumber/
> Museum of HP calculators -- URL:
> http://www.teleport.com/~dgh/hpmuseum.ht
> ml
>
> ... now let me see if I can remember
> how to do a "cube root" on the old
> Pickett slide rule... wonder where I
> put that thing ;) ? (Was that the "K"
> scale? .... hmmmm)
>
> 73 - Conrad Weiss - NN6CW
>
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