Students’ calcs in the 70s/80s

[pinkman]

In middle and high school in France during the 80’s, once the calculators were authorized for an exam (mathematics and physics) there were no restrictions about the type of calculator to use.
I had a Casio fx 7000g with 422 steps of memory, enough to enter a few formulas, but I don’t remember having used it very much during middle school. And the teachers thought it was programs! In high school we used intensively the calculators’memory to store information, and having a HP 28s was of a great help. But in fact, typing the formulas were the best way to learn them, and most of the time I used the calculator just for verification. A bit of cheating, but it was said that “they” did not care.
During university or engineering high school, the documents were often authorized, even if we continued storing data in our 28s or 48s/sx/g/gx.
If I understand the purpose of the exam mode that came later, it was more a question of equity than a problem with cheating: rich young students could buy a 48GX while other could just afford a basic scientific calculator.