Ian Lamont writes "The handheld calculator turns 40 years old this year, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has officially added to its collection examples of the first two programmable calculators, the TI-58 and TI-59. The museum already has the original 1967 'Cal-Tech' prototype, which weighs three pounds. At a ceremony at the Smithsonian yesterday, Jerry Merryman, one of the members of the TI team which developed the calculator, said that the project was started without a set budget and was something that 'we did in our spare time.' Antique calculators have a devoted following; news of a contest celebrating the 35th anniversary of the HP-35 slide rule calculator brought hundreds of fans out of the woodwork to reminisce about the pros and cons of various 70s' era calculators. There are a lot of Web resources devoted to these devices, including the Old Calculators Web Museum, where you can see pictures of everything from the Bohn Contex Model 10 Mechanical Calculator ('apparently the design of the machine caught the attention of the Soviets') to TI's first scientific calculator, the SR-20 ('keyboards were prone to bounce even when new')."
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The Handheld Calculator Turns 40
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