Calculator Wars at your School

[DaveBr]

I was in a community college 3 year electronics class in the mid 1970s. I had spent the summer before the fall start of classes learning to use a Post slide rule borrowed from an older cousin. After becoming somewhat proficient with the Post, I received a letter from the community college telling me that slide rules would no longer be used be and scientific calculators were required. Money was tight back then and I bought a TI 30 at the college's book store for all of $29. The TI worked reasonably well, but felt cheap. The class was evenly split between the HP calculator users and the TI 30 and other algebraic calculators. Every one not owning an HP calculator envied their quality construction and keyboards but believed the HP calculators were less accurate and used a "weird" entry method. There were numerous speed/accuracy contests. After a year of using a TI 30, I bought a second hand HP 21. I loved that calculator and it was the first of many HP calculators I have purchased since then.