{"id":42,"date":"2010-03-09T23:49:41","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T23:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/2010\/03\/09\/calculators\/"},"modified":"2018-01-05T07:18:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T07:18:55","slug":"calculators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/2010\/03\/09\/calculators\/","title":{"rendered":"Calculators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I posted this back in 2005, in an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2005\/03\/16\/2716.html\">entry<\/a> in my main blog, but I think it&#8217;s worth reposting here.<\/p>\n<p>One of the few things other than papers and photos that I brought home with me after that first week was Peter&#8217;s slide rule. I always wanted that slide rule when I was a kid.  I didn&#8217;t (and still don&#8217;t) know how to use it properly, but I knew it was a device for doing math, and I thought that was cool.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t bring home any of his multitude of graphing calculators.  I was surprised, though, looking at his books, to realize how long calculators had been an interest of his; there were calculator-tricks-and-games books dating back to when I was a kid. I remember the first calculator I saw, possibly the first one he owned, an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/hp25.htm\">HP-25<\/a> programmable calculator (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/25.jpg\">photo<\/a>); some of the earliest programming I did was on that calculator. I&#8217;m still sometimes a little more comfortable with Reverse Polish Notation than with more straightforward regular calculators. .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;Hey, nifty!  There&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/simulate\/simulate.htm#java25\">Java simulation of an HP-25<\/a> available free online!<\/p>\n<p>Peter once promised me a calculator of my own if I learned the squares of all the numbers up to 25.  I knew most of &#8217;em, but never did memorize the late teens and early twenties.<\/p>\n<p>At some point in high school or college I somehow managed to lose his HP-25, but he went on to more advanced calculators: a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/hp41.htm\">41C<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/41cv.jpg\">photo<\/a>), an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/hp11c.htm\">11C<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/11c.jpg\">photo<\/a>), maybe also a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/hp16.htm\">16C<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hpmuseum.org\/16.jpg\">photo<\/a>), though I&#8217;m not sure about that last. I think he didn&#8217;t make the switch to graphing calculators until he started to teach math sometime in the &#8217;90s.<\/p>\n<p>The funny thing is that he never owned a PDA and rarely used a computer (outside of work) for anything but playing games; that always seemed a little odd to me, but I wonder if he continued to think of calculators as primarily calculating devices, like the slide rule, rather than small computers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I posted this back in 2005, in an entry in my main blog, but I think it&#8217;s worth reposting here. One of the few things other than papers and photos that I brought home with me after that first week was Peter&#8217;s slide rule. I always wanted that slide rule when I was a kid. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peters-interests"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}