My personal calculator history

[dm319]

This is fun! Interesting to read all of your stories.

I remember first having a calculator when I started 'middle' school, must have been 11 years old. My parents got me a Sharp EL531-GH. I was the only kid to have one in an entire class of Casio fx-82LB fractions. I used to hold a vague sense of superiority as the Sharp had a better algebraic logic and bracket handling, but I think that was my defence mechanism for always being a bit different.

I vaguely recall when I pointed out to my dad, who always had his Casio fx-3800p sat on his office desk, how much faster my calculator was. He irately replied something like 'rubbish!!'. I've always thought of him at that point as being an old man yelling at people with newfangled devices that they claim to be better. But I'm probably a similar age now.

Loyal to Sharp, I eventually went to boarding school around the age of 13, and upgraded to this Sharp EL-506L(/556L). It was a really great machine and I much preferred the functions and UI over the equivalent Casios. I think I broke it at some point and replaced it with the very similar Sharp EL-531RH. You could type in an algebraic expression with letters, and while it wouldn't solve anything, it would calculate the value of it for given values of the variables.

I never saw a single HP calculator at my school. And I think I may have overheard someone talking disparagingly about RPN - much like you'd talk about some kind of comical affliction. That probably coloured my very limited ideas of RPN to something 'weird' or eccentric.

I went to medical school, where you don't really need a scientific, except a little for some pharmacology exams, and some statistics software for research, so while I carried on using the Sharp, it wasn't so important to studies. A lot of interests somewhat died at medical school - I loved my Amiga A1200, but I had to replace it with a Thinkpad running WinXP - and that killed my love of computing. I also loved to compose electronica, but the music school at Cambridge didn't allow me entry because I wasn't a medical student. They are not forgiven.

But now, 17 years later, I shameless geek out about everything I really wanted to back then. My DM42 comes with me to work and clinics, and calculates chemotherapy timing, clinic appointments, days post treatment, BMI, renal function, and any other quick calculations I need to do. I still use Thinkpads, but my A1200 is alive and well, and recapped, and my Thinkpad runs UbuntuMATE linux and it gets a lot of love too.

My eldest son just started year 7 (11yrs), and when he saw the Casio fx-85GT CW, he immediately wanted that. My second eldest will start next year - he is left-handed and can take quite an unconventional approach to thinking, so I believe a DM-15L is winging its way to us, and nearly on our shores.

And the cycle repeats!