Calculator Wars at your School

[RichieHH]

(06-20-2021 09:25 PM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  

(06-20-2021 08:15 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  I also remember when I attended my first college level electronics class in 1980 that there was still a giant working model of a slide rule hanging at the front of the classroom. One day we did a series of complex calculations that took about 5 minutes on our calculators. The instructor pointed to the giant slide rule and said a few years ago we were still using slide rules in this class and the problem we just did in 5 minutes took about 40 minutes to finish. Most of us were shocked since even in 1980 most of us had never used a slide rule.

Hmmm... I'd say someone was not very skilled at the slide rule! Someone who's skilled at it should be able to get answers just about as quickly as with a calculator. The big difference came when calculators became programmable and could carry out ten instructions per second. That's where I left the slide rule behind.

I'm wondering if you're joking here. There's a reason slide rules were replaced. A slide rule user won't come close to a decent sci calc user in terms of speed or accuracy. Nice idea, but somewhat hazed by romantic notion?