Even thought I was born in 1985, after the bulk of the war occurred, I saw the after effects as a kid. Even though basic scientific calculators don't offer much in the way of entertainment, I was fascinated by them as a kid, and because of said war, it always seemed like each person had a different one. I just loved tapping away on the buttons, even though I wasn't in true need of a calculator. I never knew graphing calculators existed until my brother was well into high school and got one. He barely ever let me look at it, but when I entered high school and he got a new one, he passed his old TI-86 graphing calculator to me. The fun part about it was that I rarely used it to calculate or do graphs for homework. You see we of course weren't allowed to have handheld gaming devices out while in school, but my graphing calculator got around that. So while in study hall, I would turn on my graphing calculator and play crude but still fun versions of either Tetris or Super Mario Bros. I also ended up programming funny little fortune telling program that had over 100 different fortunes to hand out depending on what number the player chose. Of course when I was really bored, I would input various graph equations and then press enter, which layer all the graphs of the equations in such a way to make intricate drawings/designs. I don't know where it is now. It is very distinct though, as back when I was a sophomore in high school a friend of mine stole it for a class period and covered it in forest camouflage duct tape.
Man, I remember when anything with a digital display was sci fi. The fits that where thrown when a watch with a digital display came out. Then the whole calculator watches came out..
+Sergiu Pop I'm still waiting on my neural interface. Pffft people used to do things with their hands? with their eyes? Hold on I need to download myself into my drone.
HP Calculators have another interesting feature. All of them used Reverse Polish Notation instead of Algebraic notation for all calculations. This meant that the numbers being calculated were entered into a stack and then the operator was given. I.E. 5 ENTER 3 ENTER * =15 As a result calculations could be executed in massive chains and done much quicker then calculators by Ti, and this really shined in their graphing calculators with 64 bit-ish saturn chips that used nybble data and some other weird 20 bit shit that made it run faster then most Z80 solutions at the time. I have an HP48G with like 640KB of memory. It's a GREAT calculator, and it can do mathematical operations in a snap.
Love these. Plus RPN basically makes order of operations a natural process. Used the HP calculators since my first, TI calculators always seemed backwards and slow, HP's Saturn and ARM based units ran leagues faster and could easily be programmed in straight C! TI's piddly little crap seemed amateur in comparison.
Communist Ralph Most, not all, HP calculators use RPN. I've got a 22S circa 1987 that just uses regular notation. That said, I do like RPN a lot. I need to grab a 48GX some time. More numbers more better.
Communist Ralph Most, not all, HP calculators use RPN. I've got a 22S circa 1987 that just uses regular notation. That said, I do like RPN a lot. I need to grab a 48GX some time. More numbers more better.
Nukle0n What's next ? You wanna tell me that you also don't need to learn how to make a hand axe for being able to hunt mammoths or your neighbor's dachshund when hungry ?
+Frank Schneider You will if you keep a couple of battery banks charged up, and your like me, and keep them in your daily backpack. Also I have a Moto G3 2015 I pulled off my charger this morning at 7:30 AM eastern time, and it's now 2:20 pm eastern time, and I still have 93% battery life left. So newer smartphones have gotten way better on battery life for sure.
Commodorefan64 I prefer to use my private phone just for calls, so I use a rater old phone. Therefore charge lasts (depending on cal frequency of course) around 2 weeks.
Frank Schneider I'm not sure if you are in the US, but if you are, and have a GSM phone on an AT&T tower that's only using 2G you will be forced to upgrade at some point because AT&T is slowly shutting down 2G to make way for more 3G and 4G LTE . Same with T-Mobile if I remember correctly.
I remember seeing these calculators in the 80s, and getting so excited to just play with all of the scientific functions on them. I think I got my first calculator sometime around 78 or 79, when I got to fifth grade. I also got my dad's old slide rule at that time and learned how to use it. In middle school (about 1982) I had a couple calculator watches too. The real cool nerds all got HP calculators and extolled the virtues of Reverse Polish Notation for making their computations. But it was extra special for me around 1985 when I was able to purchase my own scientific calculator, a Casio FX-451 for about $25, that is still sitting (and still works) next to my desktop computer. All of the scientific functions were placed on membrane keys on the calculator case. There's a photo of one at Calculator.org.
Back when I was in school, *many* years ago, everyone and their dog had the Casio fx-82, while I was utterly unfashionable, with a Texas Instruments TI-30. How the other kids laughed, with their fancy LCD displays, when I couldn't see my LED readout on a sunny day.
+Steve Benway (Retro Gaming Collector) We need a video of that... not a run-through, play-through, or anything like that... just you, using the calculator badly.... :D
awesome video clint, I can't believe calculators played such a huge role in the making of pc's, which lead to the future of technology and science, including SNES consoles, super compact and powerful laptops. Gsync, and OLED displays.. in only a short span of 50 years.
I absolutely love your Tech Tales videos. I realise these probably take the most work in terms of research and production, but I hope that you are able to keep putting out more videos of this nature and quality. Thank you so much!
Glad to see the first episode of Tech Tales for 2016. Just like everything, innovation weeds out the companies that cannot compete while the strong ones live on for years to come. it's the same reason why there are only a handful of companies making consoles. It's also very interesting to note how calculators are the reason why computers still exist. It is often a forgotten topic, and I'm glad you touched upon it.
AFGNCAAP the great As in more features being added. Believe it or not, consoles have grown over the past few decades not in terms of graphics alone, but in terms of overall features.
+Pow3rh0use The important point there is that they must keep innovating + understand the market. Being the first to invent something doesn't guarantee longevity.
Ah, memories! I had a Texas Instruments SR-10 in high school, and Dad migrated from his beloved Kueffel und Esser slide rule to a Texas Instruments SR-50 shortly thereafter. In college I switched over to Hewlett Packard and RPN notation and never looked back. Great video!
Since I'm a 90s kid I've never heard of this war but it was amazing indeed. I just wonder how my grandparents feel seeing the world go through the calculator wars but today having an smartphone. It must be overwhelming to think about it!
For Calculus 2 (years ago), I bought the TI-Nspire CAS. Wow, the plethora of ways to add 2+2, and in color! Actually, it will draw a 3-D model and rotate it.
I would love to see a follow up video on this. Also would love to see a spin off tech tales about the console wars or even the video game crash of 1983. Also you are seriously one of my favorite youtube channels, you make great videos and I love every one. Not to mention you are active in your comment community even with videos that are older.
Just reminded me that I happen to own a vintage calculator from HP, it's a 12c financial calculator, and it's from 1981. I got it as a souvenir from HPE last year, it's still in mint condition, and still able to power on.
YAY! I was hopeing tech tales wasn't a dead series. As much as I love all of your content, these always fascinate me the most. Probably takes quite a bit of work too, so thanks for all you do man. It means a lot!
My senior year in college I took a history of computing/social media course and she DID NOT discuss calculators AT ALL. But that was years ago. You should be a professor LGR!!!
Great stuff! You find dozens of videos on Atari history, Magnavox and similar topics of computer and gaming history but your uploads gives some competently assembled insight into tech that has hardly any coverage elsewhere.
Thank you. IMHO, pocket calculators are still awesome since there is something about how they look and feel that I prefer over a cell phone. And a computer is still a calculator at heart. It's fun to see people's reactions when I'm using a early 1980s HP-11c calculator though.
What an interesting episode. I didn't know that calculators were so involved in the computer revolution. I always enjoy Tech Tales. They are very well presented and you always manage to dig up very interesting stories. Can't wait to see the next one.
This is easily one of my favorite Tech Tales episodes, because this really ISN'T a subject anyone brings up at all. It's also one of the things I point to when I talk about the quality of this channel. :)
My grandparents had a TI-59, and the PC-100C thermal printer it could dock to... That was a hell of a piece of kit back in the day. With the magnetic card reader and all. I remember the vinyl pocket folio with pages upon pages of those magnetic program strips... Cool stuff.
You know if you collated these episodes into a Tech Tales book and included some extra non-video content like scans of articles, interesting stuff from manuals etc I'd totally buy it and I'm sure would many many other people.
Oh wow! I had that very same Casio FX 7000G at school! I actually tried looking for it a few months ago and couldn't quite remember which model and there it is at 7:37. You just gave me a blast from the past haha! Thank you
@01:06 - I've found such a fascinating all-mechanical calculator when clearing out my grandpa's attic, but it was a Walther, German model, produced from 1948 to 1970. I went online and even found the manual. It's fascinating, how you still had to be able to do maths in order to do calculations with it!!!
I showed this video to my dad, who was an engineer around this time period. He and his buds used to get together with their calculators and have calculator races. They would input complex equations and see whose was the fastest.
This is exactly the kind of brief video one of my teachers would have played in Science class before cracking open the texbooks for the rest of the period. I don't say this as a bad thing, just that its informative enough for a classroom.
Another fantastic video, This is what I love from your channel, videos on topics i never thought or knew about. With how popular retro console gaming is, old computers seem to not be talked about as much.
Been hard at work adding Dutch subs to this vid for a friend of mine. They've been approved and are now public. As a result, I've just now watched this video for, like, 25 times, if you include the retakes that were necessary to align the subs to the sound. Interesting little insight in history! Keep this stuff coming!
This video and the Texas instruments one is how I found out about your channel. Two years ago maybe? Since then I'm watching all your videos one by one in chronological order and I just reached this video again! I'll finish them! Thought I'm skipping most thrifts and let's plays for now. But all your videos are lovely. I can't point to a single thing to change really.
Wow! I didn't realize that there was a time in my life when consumer calculators cost $1000! It's amazing the things you don't think about when you live your life not thinking about the technology that whizzes past you in your lifetime. I seem to remember there always being calculators around but I was very young then. Apparently, there was a time in my life when my parents would probably have been doing all their math with a slide rule or the long way on paper.
9 ปีที่แล้ว +2
Wow. This was amazing. I knew some of the pocket calculator history but not all, really nothing compared to me knowing so much right now. Thank you Clint, keep it up!
I’ve got a Friden EC-132 which used to belong to a local college. When it was new in the mid-1960s, it cost about the same as a small house, and looks like something from the bridge of the USS Enterprise. It has a small CRT for the output and inside features eight large circuit boards. It still works perfectly!
This is a great documentary... thank you.... Don't forget how the calculator wars literally destroyed the slide rule industry. Within several years of the introduciton of the pocket calculator, slide rules were all but extinct except for novelties.
Awesome video! You covered pretty much all the bases here. I'd love to see a video about the rise of the graphing calculator and the competition between TI and Casio. It would be a good opportunity to explain things like why the TI-83 Plus is still the most popular one 17 years after its launch, or why TI's units are so much more expensive than Casio's.
Do you happen to know anything about a device called the Little Professor by Texas Instruments? My grandparents have had one since the 70's (I think, could have been later in a thrift store), and they also had an activity book that (I believe) was sold separately. It's just that I've always been curious about it, seeing as it was used as a "replacement" for a handheld game system when I was younger.
Calculators were up there with Speak and Spell, Game and Watch, and Tomy 3D games, when I was in primary school. That soon went out the window when we started getting home computers like the ZX Spectrum and the C64.
+mrpositronia The speak and spell was not only a great and an icon of today's pop culture, but is still used by some in the music industry (see circuit bending, although they thereby somewhat destroy the poor thing).
Great video, Clint! Only you could make a historic look at calculator development interesting to watch. I've seen a number of videos where the calculator wars are mentioned as an aside, particularly relating to Commodore and their battle with TI (TI being their early IC supplier, raised the price of their components to try to force competitors out of the calculator market which they were trying to dominate, which led to Commodore purchasing MOS Tech so they had their own IC production division, which directly led to the PET), but this is the first video I've seen which focused on the Calculator producers as a whole, and it was just as interesting as the micro-computer wars to come!
I'm normally not interested much in tec but tec tales is so interesting! As a person that is hopeless at mental math thank goodness for the calculator! 10/10 would love to hear more.
My father and I went to a little store that was in a mall in 1973 that specialized in calculators. I got a Sharp ELSI MINI with a beautiful red LED display. I still have it and it still works just fine.
I still have my Radio Shack EC-4014 scientific calculator (which is really just a rebranded Casio FX-85m) in pristine condition. Actually the only reason I wanted it was that it could do fractions, which I'd never seen on any other calculator up to that point. The ability to use hex and binary also came in handy for programming on the C64. I haven't really used it in years though. During bulk trash season, I've found 2-3 TI scientific calculators. The ones where the battery wasn't dead still worked fine. I also found an old Commodore calculator (not scientific). It works, but some of the LED segments don't light up and it actually makes a barely audible whine when you press the buttons.
Man this is great. I had a HP-67 Programmable calculator in early 1976 and later a HP-41c. I did have simpler calculators several years earlier. There was a huge user library for the HP-67 in many scientific and engineering fields along with mathematics.There were also hundreds of games developed for it was well. The HP-67 could also used the previous programs used by the older HP-65. It was also very easy to program by yourself and used magnetic strips to store programs on with a motorized card reader built into it.
Whether it's a video game retrospective, review and history of a game console, refurb of an old computer, or just you thrift shopping = I am enjoying it.
My dad had a hp 35 and gave it me to a few years ago. He told me that he used to have competitions with his friends on which was the best way to calculate equation (side rule, pencil or the calculator). Hearing that made me laugh.
My two reactions when I see a Tech Tales episode: - I was wondering about that - Oooh interesting If anything else good topic choices man. Go ahead, make my day!
In 1976 or so, I joined the war by buying an SR-52 programmable. A fault led to upgrading to the TI-59 (free from TI after getting my 52 for repair). I loved that thing and still have it though the cardreader doesn't work today. Having bought a few more along with some HP-41s, decades later it's hard to find a good one. There are supposedly a couple of places fixing HPs (not including HP who doesn't) but no-body fixes the TI calculators as far as I know. I have a TI59 and a PC100 printer which are totally dead (luckily not my original calculator) and today they are unrepairable. The PC100 seems to be the victim of bad capacitors. I wish I could find someone to repair mine. I feel like the TI-95 is the best example of this breed. They're cheap and reliable. You should do a show on that one. Also you could probably get a good show about the DM41X, one of a number of new "re-manufactured" calculator copies of the HP calculators of the 70s and 80s from SwissMicros in Switzerland. It's pretty cool to have a brand new equivalent to the HP41CX but with a flash disk visible to modern computers.
I still have my old ass Casio FX-270W Plus Scientific Calculator laying somwhere. I remember for that time it being a beast when it comes to various different functions. And it most likley is still working after like 18+ years. Good times.
Fantastic video. Your informative videos are always well-researched and presented, and even on subjects where I thought I was pretty well informed I always learn something new.
My dad uses a mid 80s TI-30 SLR+ everyday.It still has the little equation sheet that hides behind it. As a machinist who knows how many times it has been dropped/spilled on... very impressed with that calculator.
I absolutely love this series of yours. It's really something unique and special you have here on YT! I love all your vids actually, but this series especially! Keep it up.
You should totally do a Tech Tales on those old PDAs! I'd watch it. Especially if the Gizmondo/N-Gage disasters of "OH GOD WHY DID WE THINK TO COMBINE A PDA WITH A GAME CONSOLE" get mentioned too.
My grandma had so many calculators from these periods. They were so fun to play with to me for some reason. Which says a lot considering my severe dyscalculia.
Crazy crazy history. In about 10 years a brand new and until-recently impossible market became oversaturated. In 1973 the first sceintific calculator, the hp-35, launched for 395 dollars. 4 years later in 1977, the EL-500 was available for 14.95. About 1/26th of the price (which I actually just calculated on my EL-500 I own)
Desktop calculators can never be replaced as long as you have stacks of checks to add and need to run a tape. I do my ten-key with my left-hand because I used my right-hand to flip 100's of checks off a stack daily in my A/R job for over 20 years. I liked the Sharp desktops the best.
I'm really surprised you didn't talk about the Bomar 901B which I had always heard was the true first "pocket" calculator. I was big into calculator history back in early high school.
+Lazy Game Reviews ti has the major piece of the cake? well, not in germany. her everyone has casio pocket calculators. i also have mine until today. :)
Even thought I was born in 1985, after the bulk of the war occurred, I saw the after effects as a kid. Even though basic scientific calculators don't offer much in the way of entertainment, I was fascinated by them as a kid, and because of said war, it always seemed like each person had a different one. I just loved tapping away on the buttons, even though I wasn't in true need of a calculator.
I never knew graphing calculators existed until my brother was well into high school and got one. He barely ever let me look at it, but when I entered high school and he got a new one, he passed his old TI-86 graphing calculator to me. The fun part about it was that I rarely used it to calculate or do graphs for homework.
You see we of course weren't allowed to have handheld gaming devices out while in school, but my graphing calculator got around that. So while in study hall, I would turn on my graphing calculator and play crude but still fun versions of either Tetris or Super Mario Bros. I also ended up programming funny little fortune telling program that had over 100 different fortunes to hand out depending on what number the player chose. Of course when I was really bored, I would input various graph equations and then press enter, which layer all the graphs of the equations in such a way to make intricate drawings/designs.
I don't know where it is now. It is very distinct though, as back when I was a sophomore in high school a friend of mine stole it for a class period and covered it in forest camouflage duct tape.
I hope you find that calculator
You have reached your limit on talking, shut up
Man, I remember when anything with a digital display was sci fi. The fits that where thrown when a watch with a digital display came out. Then the whole calculator watches came out..
+Amesie's Automotive Corner I feel old now..
I'm watching a video about calculators
only on LGR would I love it
Glad to hear it :D
His voice is soothing.
CalcuSouls
Top ten calculator waifus
I agree
Can wait to see a version of this video about Smartphones in a decade or so
+fununcle "Most people do these things using their glasses, but there was a time where you needed a thing called 'a smartphone' to do them"
***** it was nothing like what we thought it would be... I'm having high hopes for Microsoft's "HoloLens", though
+Sergiu Pop I'm still waiting on my neural interface. Pffft people used to do things with their hands? with their eyes? Hold on I need to download myself into my drone.
Apple is basically Ti and Samsung is Casio. Every other cheap graphing calculator is a cheap fake samsung phone.
8 years later i dont think this is happening 😭😭
HP Calculators have another interesting feature. All of them used Reverse Polish Notation instead of Algebraic notation for all calculations.
This meant that the numbers being calculated were entered into a stack and then the operator was given. I.E.
5
ENTER
3
ENTER
*
=15
As a result calculations could be executed in massive chains and done much quicker then calculators by Ti, and this really shined in their graphing calculators with 64 bit-ish saturn chips that used nybble data and some other weird 20 bit shit that made it run faster then most Z80 solutions at the time.
I have an HP48G with like 640KB of memory. It's a GREAT calculator, and it can do mathematical operations in a snap.
Love these. Plus RPN basically makes order of operations a natural process. Used the HP calculators since my first, TI calculators always seemed backwards and slow, HP's Saturn and ARM based units ran leagues faster and could easily be programmed in straight C! TI's piddly little crap seemed amateur in comparison.
Communist Ralph Most, not all, HP calculators use RPN. I've got a 22S circa 1987 that just uses regular notation.
That said, I do like RPN a lot. I need to grab a 48GX some time. More numbers more better.
Communist Ralph Most, not all, HP calculators use RPN. I've got a 22S circa 1987 that just uses regular notation.
That said, I do like RPN a lot. I need to grab a 48GX some time. More numbers more better.
A bit annoying first .... brilliant once you got used to. In my 48G+ (128K RAM ... WOWWWWWWWWWww). But seriously .... what a machine.
Yes but went they started making full fledged computers 🙄 Like seriously HP has not changed at all.
My math teacher circa 1995 "You won't always have a calculator available to you!"
Stick it in your eye, teacher.
+The Obsolete Geek
You won't always have a smart phone with sufficient battery left with you ..
Nukle0n
What's next ? You wanna tell me that you also don't need to learn how to make a hand axe for being able to hunt mammoths or your neighbor's dachshund when hungry ?
+Frank Schneider You will if you keep a couple of battery banks charged up, and your like me, and keep them in your daily backpack. Also I have a Moto G3 2015 I pulled off my charger this morning at 7:30 AM eastern time, and it's now 2:20 pm eastern time, and I still have 93% battery life left. So newer smartphones have gotten way better on battery life for sure.
Commodorefan64
I prefer to use my private phone just for calls, so I use a rater old phone. Therefore charge lasts (depending on cal frequency of course) around 2 weeks.
Frank Schneider I'm not sure if you are in the US, but if you are, and have a GSM phone on an AT&T tower that's only using 2G you will be forced to upgrade at some point because AT&T is slowly shutting down 2G to make way for more 3G and 4G LTE . Same with T-Mobile if I remember correctly.
Your voice really fits the "history of" type of content. Really easy to listen to and interesting. Keep up the good work.
This is why I love vintage calculators, they were a real forerunner of technological development over the 60s and 70s.
I remember seeing these calculators in the 80s, and getting so excited to just play with all of the scientific functions on them. I think I got my first calculator sometime around 78 or 79, when I got to fifth grade. I also got my dad's old slide rule at that time and learned how to use it. In middle school (about 1982) I had a couple calculator watches too. The real cool nerds all got HP calculators and extolled the virtues of Reverse Polish Notation for making their computations.
But it was extra special for me around 1985 when I was able to purchase my own scientific calculator, a Casio FX-451 for about $25, that is still sitting (and still works) next to my desktop computer. All of the scientific functions were placed on membrane keys on the calculator case. There's a photo of one at Calculator.org.
"By pressing down a special key, it plays a little melody"
+Tony McModeNut Thank you.
+Tony McModeNut beep boop, trrrrrrrrrr.... !
+Tony McModeNut It's more fun to compute.
+Tony McModeNut You Men-Machine! I bet you live in a Computer World and only order The Mix in an Electric Café! ;)
=D
Back when I was in school, *many* years ago, everyone and their dog had the Casio fx-82, while I was utterly unfashionable, with a Texas Instruments TI-30. How the other kids laughed, with their fancy LCD displays, when I couldn't see my LED readout on a sunny day.
+Steve Benway (Retro Gaming Collector) We need a video of that... not a run-through, play-through, or anything like that... just you, using the calculator badly.... :D
Sadly, I don't have it any more.
Steve Benway still have an fx 82. it was actually my father's and I still use it
I have a working TI-30
*MANY* years later, the Casio FX82 still remains the norm for Dutch high schools (we have the fx-82MS as standard here)
i never knew a video about calculators could be so interesting. Only LGR could do it.
awesome video clint, I can't believe calculators played such a huge role in the making of pc's, which lead to the future of technology and science, including SNES consoles, super compact and powerful laptops. Gsync, and OLED displays.. in only a short span of 50 years.
The Dankpod army comes over here! Hello Clint!
I swear, everytime LGR posts a new video, extreme comfort soon follows.
I absolutely love your Tech Tales videos. I realise these probably take the most work in terms of research and production, but I hope that you are able to keep putting out more videos of this nature and quality. Thank you so much!
Glad you enjoyed!
The calculator wars.So many lives lost,so much destruction.
Robert Whitley my grandfather died during the calculator war in 1978 :(
They couldn't even calculate the costs
Only the dead have seen the end of the calculator wars...
The destruction caused by the Cold War will never match the destruction caused by the Calculator Wars!
Wait, I need some time to process this.
I still have a mechanical calculator from 1918. Gift from my grandfather. Weighs a ton and can only add up numbers, that's it :D
Ha ha ha ha
Glad to see the first episode of Tech Tales for 2016.
Just like everything, innovation weeds out the companies that cannot compete while the strong ones live on for years to come. it's the same reason why there are only a handful of companies making consoles.
It's also very interesting to note how calculators are the reason why computers still exist. It is often a forgotten topic, and I'm glad you touched upon it.
> implying that the console market is innovative
AFGNCAAP the great
As in more features being added. Believe it or not, consoles have grown over the past few decades not in terms of graphics alone, but in terms of overall features.
+Pow3rh0use The important point there is that they must keep innovating + understand the market. Being the first to invent something doesn't guarantee longevity.
Ah, memories! I had a Texas Instruments SR-10 in high school, and Dad migrated from his beloved Kueffel und Esser slide rule to a Texas Instruments SR-50 shortly thereafter. In college I switched over to Hewlett Packard and RPN notation and never looked back. Great video!
I knew of the correlation of the calculator industry and the rise of micro computers, but I never knew how deep that connection was. Thanks Clint!
Since I'm a 90s kid I've never heard of this war but it was amazing indeed. I just wonder how my grandparents feel seeing the world go through the calculator wars but today having an smartphone. It must be overwhelming to think about it!
For Calculus 2 (years ago), I bought the TI-Nspire CAS. Wow, the plethora of ways to add 2+2, and in color! Actually, it will draw a 3-D model and rotate it.
I would love to see a follow up video on this. Also would love to see a spin off tech tales about the console wars or even the video game crash of 1983. Also you are seriously one of my favorite youtube channels, you make great videos and I love every one. Not to mention you are active in your comment community even with videos that are older.
Thank you! I'd like to cover the crash of '83 at some point :)
That was surprisingly interesting. It all makes perfect sense too, the calculator evolved like most tech. Good work LGR.
Just reminded me that I happen to own a vintage calculator from HP, it's a 12c financial calculator, and it's from 1981. I got it as a souvenir from HPE last year, it's still in mint condition, and still able to power on.
YAY! I was hopeing tech tales wasn't a dead series. As much as I love all of your content, these always fascinate me the most. Probably takes quite a bit of work too, so thanks for all you do man. It means a lot!
Really good stuff here Clint. People tend to forget what a big deal pocket calculators were in the 70's.
My senior year in college I took a history of computing/social media course and she DID NOT discuss calculators AT ALL. But that was years ago.
You should be a professor LGR!!!
Who'd have thought the pocket calculator history would be so fascinating? Great work and many thanks for making it.
Great stuff! You find dozens of videos on Atari history, Magnavox and similar topics of computer and gaming history but your uploads gives some competently assembled insight into tech that has hardly any coverage elsewhere.
These videos are just great, and I don't know anyone else doing this kind of documentary style video about these topics. Awesome work, man.
Fantastic video. Made me get all nostalgic for the early 80's when I was a kid playing with my Dad's calculators.
Thank you. IMHO, pocket calculators are still awesome since there is something about how they look and feel that I prefer over a cell phone. And a computer is still a calculator at heart. It's fun to see people's reactions when I'm using a early 1980s HP-11c calculator though.
What an interesting episode. I didn't know that calculators were so involved in the computer revolution.
I always enjoy Tech Tales. They are very well presented and you always manage to dig up very interesting stories. Can't wait to see the next one.
This is easily one of my favorite Tech Tales episodes, because this really ISN'T a subject anyone brings up at all. It's also one of the things I point to when I talk about the quality of this channel. :)
My grandparents had a TI-59, and the PC-100C thermal printer it could dock to... That was a hell of a piece of kit back in the day. With the magnetic card reader and all. I remember the vinyl pocket folio with pages upon pages of those magnetic program strips... Cool stuff.
You know if you collated these episodes into a Tech Tales book and included some extra non-video content like scans of articles, interesting stuff from manuals etc I'd totally buy it and I'm sure would many many other people.
You sir are awesome! I honestly never knew how much of an impact the calculator had on the uprise of the pc! Thumbs up to you good sir!
Those desktop calculators are freakin sexy! If I had one I would totally look at it once in a while.
Oh wow! I had that very same Casio FX 7000G at school! I actually tried looking for it a few months ago and couldn't quite remember which model and there it is at 7:37. You just gave me a blast from the past haha! Thank you
@01:06 - I've found such a fascinating all-mechanical calculator when clearing out my grandpa's attic, but it was a Walther, German model, produced from 1948 to 1970. I went online and even found the manual. It's fascinating, how you still had to be able to do maths in order to do calculations with it!!!
I showed this video to my dad, who was an engineer around this time period. He and his buds used to get together with their calculators and have calculator races. They would input complex equations and see whose was the fastest.
That's awesome, I hope he enjoyed!
This is exactly the kind of brief video one of my teachers would have played in Science class before cracking open the texbooks for the rest of the period. I don't say this as a bad thing, just that its informative enough for a classroom.
This is neither Lazy, nor about Gaming, nor a Review. You, good sir, have transcended yourself over the years. Cheers.
Oh man , that brings me back to school and wanting a ti81 so bad. That thing was like the coolest thing ever at the time :D
I have a Sharp ELSI MATE EL-5001 that dad bought many many years ago still runs well and use it in the shop love the Green display on it.
Another fantastic video, This is what I love from your channel, videos on topics i never thought or knew about. With how popular retro console gaming is, old computers seem to not be talked about as much.
Been hard at work adding Dutch subs to this vid for a friend of mine. They've been approved and are now public. As a result, I've just now watched this video for, like, 25 times, if you include the retakes that were necessary to align the subs to the sound. Interesting little insight in history! Keep this stuff coming!
This video and the Texas instruments one is how I found out about your channel. Two years ago maybe? Since then I'm watching all your videos one by one in chronological order and I just reached this video again! I'll finish them! Thought I'm skipping most thrifts and let's plays for now. But all your videos are lovely. I can't point to a single thing to change really.
This was very helpful in my understanding of why my dad got so many calculators for his bar mitzvah. I was always a bit confused when he told me that.
Wow! I didn't realize that there was a time in my life when consumer calculators cost $1000! It's amazing the things you don't think about when you live your life not thinking about the technology that whizzes past you in your lifetime. I seem to remember there always being calculators around but I was very young then. Apparently, there was a time in my life when my parents would probably have been doing all their math with a slide rule or the long way on paper.
Wow. This was amazing. I knew some of the pocket calculator history but not all, really nothing compared to me knowing so much right now. Thank you Clint, keep it up!
This was great. I Still have Two Model 600 National Semiconductor calculators (6 digit.4 function and no D.P.)
I’ve got a Friden EC-132 which used to belong to a local college. When it was new in the mid-1960s, it cost about the same as a small house, and looks like something from the bridge of the USS Enterprise. It has a small CRT for the output and inside features eight large circuit boards. It still works perfectly!
This is a great documentary... thank you.... Don't forget how the calculator wars literally destroyed the slide rule industry. Within several years of the introduciton of the pocket calculator, slide rules were all but extinct except for novelties.
Lazy Game Reviews, I never knew about the calculator wars... very interesting and would love a sequel!!
Awesome video! You covered pretty much all the bases here.
I'd love to see a video about the rise of the graphing calculator and the competition between TI and Casio. It would be a good opportunity to explain things like why the TI-83 Plus is still the most popular one 17 years after its launch, or why TI's units are so much more expensive than Casio's.
Check back next week!
Do you happen to know anything about a device called the Little Professor by Texas Instruments? My grandparents have had one since the 70's (I think, could have been later in a thrift store), and they also had an activity book that (I believe) was sold separately. It's just that I've always been curious about it, seeing as it was used as a "replacement" for a handheld game system when I was younger.
Oh! I had to learn math with one!
numberphile has a good video on it
It was more of a math teaching game than a calculator. I still have mine around here somewhere.
Calculators were up there with Speak and Spell, Game and Watch, and Tomy 3D games, when I was in primary school. That soon went out the window when we started getting home computers like the ZX Spectrum and the C64.
+mrpositronia
The speak and spell was not only a great and an icon of today's pop culture, but is still used by some in the music industry (see circuit bending, although they thereby somewhat destroy the poor thing).
+Frank Schneider Really?? Have to look that up.
Thomas Spychalski
The Wikipedia article on Speak & Spell has 2 sections and references on this topic for a start.
Frank Schneider Cheers!! :)
Great video, Clint! Only you could make a historic look at calculator development interesting to watch.
I've seen a number of videos where the calculator wars are mentioned as an aside, particularly relating to Commodore and their battle with TI (TI being their early IC supplier, raised the price of their components to try to force competitors out of the calculator market which they were trying to dominate, which led to Commodore purchasing MOS Tech so they had their own IC production division, which directly led to the PET), but this is the first video I've seen which focused on the Calculator producers as a whole, and it was just as interesting as the micro-computer wars to come!
Very articulate and interesting. Tech Tales is probably my favorite series on your channel, really great to see a new one.
The late Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo, began his path to programming through a pocket calculator.
I'm normally not interested much in tec but tec tales is so interesting! As a person that is hopeless at mental math thank goodness for the calculator! 10/10 would love to hear more.
My father and I went to a little store that was in a mall in 1973 that specialized in calculators. I got a Sharp ELSI MINI with a beautiful red LED display. I still have it and it still works just fine.
I think this is becoming one of my favorite series of yours.
I still have my Radio Shack EC-4014 scientific calculator (which is really just a rebranded Casio FX-85m) in pristine condition. Actually the only reason I wanted it was that it could do fractions, which I'd never seen on any other calculator up to that point. The ability to use hex and binary also came in handy for programming on the C64. I haven't really used it in years though.
During bulk trash season, I've found 2-3 TI scientific calculators. The ones where the battery wasn't dead still worked fine. I also found an old Commodore calculator (not scientific). It works, but some of the LED segments don't light up and it actually makes a barely audible whine when you press the buttons.
Man this is great. I had a HP-67 Programmable calculator in early 1976 and later a HP-41c.
I did have simpler calculators several years earlier.
There was a huge user library for the HP-67 in many scientific and engineering fields along with mathematics.There were also hundreds of games developed for it was well.
The HP-67 could also used the previous programs used by the older HP-65.
It was also very easy to program by yourself and used magnetic strips to store programs on with a motorized card reader built into it.
yes! love your tech tales series! I was hoping you'd mention the TI-85 in there, that's where I jumped ship from the calculator wars myself haha.
well done! I love classic portable calculators. one of your best videos so far. happy new year
I'm literally listening to the history of calculators. LGR is the only channel that o would be so content hungry that I'd watched this and love it.
Whether it's a video game retrospective, review and history of a game console, refurb of an old computer, or just you thrift shopping = I am enjoying it.
My HP-41CX still works, and is packed with extra modules for which I have the applicable overlays. These are amazing machines.
I totally want one of those build your own calculator kits.
My dad had a hp 35 and gave it me to a few years ago. He told me that he used to have competitions with his friends on which was the best way to calculate equation (side rule, pencil or the calculator). Hearing that made me laugh.
My two reactions when I see a Tech Tales episode:
- I was wondering about that
- Oooh interesting
If anything else good topic choices man. Go ahead, make my day!
Man those old calculators look all sorts of bad ass with those lovely red displays.
Also did not know there was this much history in the lil beasties.
gotta love the fact that even the arguments on this particular video are fairly wholesome X'''D
Very interesting. I was not aware that there was so much competition for that market back then. Thanks for covering that!
In 1976 or so, I joined the war by buying an SR-52 programmable. A fault led to upgrading to the TI-59 (free from TI after getting my 52 for repair). I loved that thing and still have it though the cardreader doesn't work today. Having bought a few more along with some HP-41s, decades later it's hard to find a good one. There are supposedly a couple of places fixing HPs (not including HP who doesn't) but no-body fixes the TI calculators as far as I know. I have a TI59 and a PC100 printer which are totally dead (luckily not my original calculator) and today they are unrepairable. The PC100 seems to be the victim of bad capacitors. I wish I could find someone to repair mine. I feel like the TI-95 is the best example of this breed. They're cheap and reliable. You should do a show on that one. Also you could probably get a good show about the DM41X, one of a number of new "re-manufactured" calculator copies of the HP calculators of the 70s and 80s from SwissMicros in Switzerland. It's pretty cool to have a brand new equivalent to the HP41CX but with a flash disk visible to modern computers.
I wouldn't have expected that topic to be fascinating but it was. Well done!
I still have my old ass Casio FX-270W Plus Scientific Calculator laying somwhere.
I remember for that time it being a beast when it comes to various different functions. And it most likley is still working after like 18+ years. Good times.
Ooh, the Casio fx19.... I got shivers! Takes me right back! Great video!
Great video. I had a Casio FX19 calculator .. happy days trying to use numerals to say words when upside down. Simple times. ...
Fantastic video. Your informative videos are always well-researched and presented, and even on subjects where I thought I was pretty well informed I always learn something new.
My dad uses a mid 80s TI-30 SLR+ everyday.It still has the little equation sheet that hides behind it. As a machinist who knows how many times it has been dropped/spilled on... very impressed with that calculator.
I absolutely love this series of yours. It's really something unique and special you have here on YT! I love all your vids actually, but this series especially! Keep it up.
Wow, I had never even heard of the calculator wars before. Very interesting stuff!
You should totally do a Tech Tales on those old PDAs! I'd watch it. Especially if the Gizmondo/N-Gage disasters of "OH GOD WHY DID WE THINK TO COMBINE A PDA WITH A GAME CONSOLE" get mentioned too.
My grandma had so many calculators from these periods. They were so fun to play with to me for some reason. Which says a lot considering my severe dyscalculia.
Crazy crazy history. In about 10 years a brand new and until-recently impossible market became oversaturated. In 1973 the first sceintific calculator, the hp-35, launched for 395 dollars. 4 years later in 1977, the EL-500 was available for 14.95. About 1/26th of the price (which I actually just calculated on my EL-500 I own)
Remember the little blue TI-108s that were standard issue in elementary school? I bought myself a new one for nostalgia.
Dang, this was a really interesting episode! It's neat how many different companies tried to get in on the calculator business.
You actually made the history of calculators entertaining and interesting. Amazing.
Desktop calculators can never be replaced as long as you have stacks of checks to add and need to run a tape. I do my ten-key with my left-hand because I used my right-hand to flip 100's of checks off a stack daily in my A/R job for over 20 years. I liked the Sharp desktops the best.
People still write checks???
Quite a few people still do at least to pay bills. @@stevenlitvintchouk3131
I'm really surprised you didn't talk about the Bomar 901B which I had always heard was the true first "pocket" calculator. I was big into calculator history back in early high school.
I would like to hear about TIs dominance in the educational market.. I still have my IT 82 plus
Check back next week!
+Lazy Game Reviews :O Omg, really?? You know that this isn't funny, if it's meant to be a joke...!! :O
+biboKralle Not a joke, that's next Monday's video topic :) It's already up on the LGR Patreon page!
Patreon-Supporter-Consideration-Level at 90%, Captain!
+Lazy Game Reviews ti has the major piece of the cake? well, not in germany. her everyone has casio pocket calculators. i also have mine until today. :)
Only LGR could make a video that get's me interested in the history of pocket calculators.
My favorite video on this channel so far!
Awesome to hear :)
I love your Tech Tales videos and this is another great episode. Thanks for making them and please keep 'em coming!