40 and Over Club

[Velocity]

I learned to use a slide rule in high school chemistry class, and then in college the handheld calculators came out and slide rules went the way of the abacus. I remember using the log tables in trigonometry class. Never liked math much either. Back when I was a child we learned arithmetic. When did it all become math?
I'm ancient, so I used to clean the chalk out of the erasers in junior high school for brownie points and because my schoolbus got to school so darn early in the morning. I used a vacuum device to suck that chalk out of the erasers. Sheesh, it isn't even junior high anymore, now it's Middle School.

 

[TrekkieMonster]

I remember using log tables and slide rules both, yep.

Well...I think I remember those. But I am under 40. Must mean my school was very old-fashionated. I have no idea anymore how those things worked, but there is this distant memory of someone trying to explain them to my math-frustraited self.

TerokNor

P.S. We had calculators too of course, but we were not always allowed to use them.

Indeed, how many hung these from their belts?

http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h414/GovKodos/Star Trek Images/TI-30_LEDcopy.jpg

Not that model, but the scientific calculators were just coming in while I was still in high school. I think this one and this were the current models at the time, and a couple of years later I had one of these. (We weren't allowed to use them for tests, though.)

Why you young whippersnapper and your fancy gadgets! In my day, we had to walk to and from school ... up hill both ways ... with our TI-30s weighing us down. Spoiled brats, anyway ....

 

[Star Wolf]

We were taught how to use slide-rules but calculators were just becoming cheap and powerful about the time I got to trigonometry class. Did anyone else have a computer class and had to manually learn the IBM punch card codes?

 

[Sector 7]

Well...I think I remember those. But I am under 40. Must mean my school was very old-fashionated. I have no idea anymore how those things worked, but there is this distant memory of someone trying to explain them to my math-frustraited self.

TerokNor

P.S. We had calculators too of course, but we were not always allowed to use them.

Indeed, how many hung these from their belts?

I was cleaning out some boxes last week (looking for a car title I haven't seen in years) when I ran across my old TI-30. I also took typing in school where we used IBM Selectric and Royal typewriters. I remember learning to use a slide-rule, never did anything with it and would not know how to use it today.

 

[M'Sharak]

We were taught how to use slide-rules but calculators were just becoming cheap and powerful about the time I got to trigonometry class. Did anyone else have a computer class and had to manually learn the IBM punch card codes?

There was a tabletop computer with an optical card reader in the classroom where I had my chemistry and physics classes, and I remember learning to punch cards by hand to program it to do some fairly simple calculations. When I got to the local community college, I took a basic accounting class where, for the big end-of-semester assignment, we had to use an IBM keypunch to make up decks of punch cards, which we then took down to the computer lab at the main campus to run the batch job and get a printout* of what we hoped would be accurate and correctly-formatted financial statements.


* on big Burroughs machines which printed an entire 11x17 page at a time in about half a second each. Very noisy.

I remember using log tables and slide rules both, yep.

Indeed, how many hung these from their belts?

http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h414/GovKodos/Star Trek Images/TI-30_LEDcopy.jpg

Not that model, but the scientific calculators were just coming in while I was still in high school. I think this one and this were the current models at the time, and a couple of years later I had one of these. (We weren't allowed to use them for tests, though.)

Why you young whippersnapper and your fancy gadgets! In my day, we had to walk to and from school ... up hill both ways ... with our TI-30s weighing us down. Spoiled brats, anyway ....

Those were all earlier models, you young punk. The TI-30 didn't come along until after I'd finished high school.

 

[MANT!]

Slide Rules... I used 'em for a few tests in H.S. and the Log tables as well...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule

My dad brought many home from his work...(useful, I guess, in checking results from Fortran programs)

I also got huge tape cases...from my dad's work as well.. they made wonderful alien spacecraft to fly against my Major Matt Mason astronauts...

He got a TI calculator in '74 (used 4 AA Batteries that lasted only for a few hours) and never brought home any more sliderules...

 

[TerokNor]

Of course, when I was at school the teacher used to use a blackboard - no whiteboards back then, and certainly no StarBoards (interactive whiteboards).

I loved being the dustboard monitor. Had to wipe the board clean and then take the dusters out and clean them by whacking them with a ruler.

I also liked being milk monitor (back then each day a child got a free small bottle of milk - at least in Tasmanian state schools they did). I liked being flower monitor because my mother had a beautiful flower garden so it was easy for me to bring flowers for the teacher's desk. I didn't like being the bin monitor because I didn't like having to empty the rubbish. I know there were some other jobs but I can't remember what they were.

*scratches had* Hmm... here blackboards and chalk is still the common thing. A few whitebords are there to use, but mostly transportable ones, not integrated in the rooms, only blackboards are integrated there. And No starboards at all (never have seen one at least).

TerokNor

P.S. And that calculator on the picture indeed does look ancient.

 

[MLJames]

We were taught how to use slide-rules but calculators were just becoming cheap and powerful about the time I got to trigonometry class. Did anyone else have a computer class and had to manually learn the IBM punch card codes?

That was the advanced class in my high school. The basic class used teletypes, and we stored (and submitted) our programs on paper tape. The semester I took it in senior year was the first year the school had computer students who had been exposed to computers beforehand, and as such they knew enough to be dangerous. One of them figured out how to dump the OS, and the school had to bring in a contractor from the manufacturer to reprogram it from the ground up. He came in with a stack of 9-inch floppies you wouldn't believe. Because of this fiasco, the next semester the school upgraded to six TRS-80s. Upgraded