...Wait a few years and Radio Shack will sell you a pocket computer!
The Elektronika B3-31 looks a lot like both of these machines, but it was a full scale scientific calculator. It was available around the same time (1977-8) but it cost anywhere from 350-150 rubles.
My father had one. I remember that if you typed in a "difficult" calculation e.g. 638954/214332, the display would flicker for several seconds before the answer finally popped out.
We gave one to my grandmother (who would have been oh, 79 or 80 then -- she was a product of the very late 19th century), but she insisted that balancing her checkbook by hand kept her brain sharp. She was probably right, since she only stopped doing it that way a decade or so later when her eyesight failed, and her brain was still good when she died a few years after that.
Vintage. Nerd. Porn.
ReplyDeleteOMG! Percentage, too? Excuse me, I need about five minutes in the bathroom.
ReplyDelete...Wait a few years and Radio Shack will sell you a pocket computer!
ReplyDeleteThe Elektronika B3-31 looks a lot like both of these machines, but it was a full scale scientific calculator. It was available around the same time (1977-8) but it cost anywhere from 350-150 rubles.
My father had one. I remember that if you typed in a "difficult" calculation e.g. 638954/214332, the display would flicker for several seconds before the answer finally popped out.
ReplyDeleteI think I still have one of those here in my desk...
ReplyDeleteNope, close though, it's a TI-30.
We absolutely had this calculator growing up. It was the one my brother learned to calculate "58008" and "7734" on. Good times.
ReplyDeleteMy brother saved up his allowance of 25 cents a week and bought one of these as a present for my mother.
ReplyDeleteAdorable, no?
We gave one to my grandmother (who would have been oh, 79 or 80 then -- she was a product of the very late 19th century), but she insisted that balancing her checkbook by hand kept her brain sharp. She was probably right, since she only stopped doing it that way a decade or so later when her eyesight failed, and her brain was still good when she died a few years after that.
ReplyDeleteDr J - 58008, I forgot about that! Yes, good times...
ReplyDelete