My personal calculator history

[Maximilian Hohmann]

My history...

... began with a Privileg 883 D-ESR-E that I got ca. 1977 in what would be called "high school" in the United States. A colorful non-programmable scientific calculator with green VFD that still works after almost 50 years.

This was followed by a Ti-59 which I got for my last year at school in 1979. I kept it all the way through university (aerospace engineering) and it too still works. Some time in the early 1980ies the Ti-59 needed to be repaired, which was done by Texas Instruments for a very reasonable fixed price but took several weeks. Because I really needed a calculator then I bought the cheapest (scientific) one they had at the library store, a Ti-30 LCD. The keyboard was bouncy right from the day I purchased it and soon some display digits would fail, but it was needed only for a few weeks. I think it still works, but I would have to search very intensively to find it.

Later I bought an Aristo Aviat 618 (ca. 1988) followed by an ASA CX-1 Pathfinder (ca. 1989) when I started training for my second profession.

And this is it, I never needed a pocket calculator at work ever, not as an engineer and not as a pilot either. So I never bought another calculator because I had to.

But the fascination that came with the first calculators never went away and I kept buying calculators because I wanted to. I don't count them, but the total number is way above 1,000.

I aim at a complete collection of HP models (which I know I will never have but I am getting close), I want as many navigation calculators as I can find, I wanted to have all the 300-series Compucorp calculators (success!) and in general I will still buy anything that glows in the dark and has more than "+ - * /" on it's keyboard. The older it is, the more appeal it has for me. Modern time replicas, simulators, emulators and suchlikes are not (yet) in my collection, but the idea of repurposing existing calculators to create something better has some appeal.

Regards
Max