In 1973 it was handheld scientific calculators. The Hewitt Packard HP 35 was out already in the fall of 1972 but they were over $350. Our Freshman Chem recital instructor told us to buy the cheapest plastic slide rule we could find, not the $25 Pickett ones in the bookstore when I was a freshman in ’72-73. Better things were coming.

By the summer of 1973, the Texas Instruments TI 45 was available and didn’t have the reverse Polish operating system of the HP. I mail ordered one from HP with my summer job pay for $149. This is equal to over $1000 in today’s money. It was a bargain. It was also equal to about one quarter’s tuition for an in-state student back then.

Different professors had different policies on the use of calculators on tests back then. Some students simply couldn’t afford a calculator like this. Some professors just wanted us to set up our work ready to go with a calculator or slide rule, without grinding out the answer. Some forbid the use of calculators. Some said use them if you had them.

The TI-30Xa still used by many older engineers (like me) is roughly equal to the old TI-45. It costs about $10.00 at Wal Mart.

There was also a computer science major then that talked about how much memory it would take to record video on a computer hard drive (the size of a small refrigerator back then) and how it wasn’t practical yet.

There was also a student walking around our dorm with a small cassette player with the big can headphones of the day plugged into it. This was at least 4 years before Sony came out with the Walkman and made a fortune with it.

Bruce Kettunen
Metallurgy ’76

When I arrived at Tech from Canton, Ohio in the Fall 1970, the Marchant Electromechanical Calculators in the Forestry Dept. were the standard; and the “highest tech” that I had ever encountered.  As I recall, among the professors only Bob Sajdak had the patience needed to repair one of the things when all those mechanical wheels and carriage shifters were put out of alignment by some challenging calculation.  The machines were in a locked lab and student access to the temperamental titans was tightly controlled.

But, there was one engineering student on our floor in Wadsworth Hall whose parents had sent him off to Tech with a brand new hand–held cutting edge calculator that could add, subtract, multiply and divide.  That calculator, which would run you perhaps $1.99 today had set his mom and dad back about $400 – a healthy helping of cash in 1970.  Its magical calculation prowess was a source of envy.  Of course he was not permitted to use it in class, after all that would be tantamount to cheating; and of course he still had to become slide-rule proficient.

Jim Bernier