Calculator Wars at your School

[Steve Simpkin]

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.

Slide rules dominated the engineering and science fields for over a hundred years and were completely replaced in only about 4 years. Even the electronic scientific calculator that replaced it was largely replaced by personal computers in theses fields within about 15-20 years.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collectio...lide-rules