what are you doing ?

[Mike H]

Excellent. Wish I kept mine, was a 1972 one. Dad got it for me, he already had one. Cost £47. Batteries lasted 20 minutes. 4 or 6 x AA, can't rmember which. Consequently always ran it on the charger if using it a lot. Taught me more about math than school ever did. Also had that blue/green display too, suspected this is where most of the battery went!

[Paul Barker]

Talking of Casio, in 1976 my Mum and Dad invested in the latest technology and purchased a Calculator. I've just got it working again, yey!

That was the era when I read Economics at Hull University. We werent allowed calculators we had a slide rule log tables and pensil and sheets of paper to do our workings out on under exam conditions. Its a bit of a blurr now but vaguely recall about two weeks solid of final exams might have been longer working everything out the long way.looking back, it was sheer madness not allowing us to use what was by then proven technology. I was probably the last generation deprived of calculators in exams.

[vinylnvalves]

I still use my Casio FX80 on a daily basis..

I have somewhere my late father-in law, Sinclair calculator…. Now that’s a brick.

[pre65]

All the early things with LED displays that I remember had red displays, calculators and watches.

[Mike H]

@ Paul, I remember considering a computer programming course, until I found out all the programming tuition was about punched cards. Even then that was stone-age

Just remembered, sometime in the '70's there was a long running series (about 10 months or so) in Practical Electronics, build your own calculator. All with 7400 series TTL logic IC's. It were 'ooge. Imagine like a filing cabinet drawer, but half the height, kind of thing. On the back panel was a TO3 cased regulator, and a wee keyboard attached to the front, below the 7-segment displays. I never built it, but it was kind of interesting to watch it unfold. It was never a very powerful calculator I don't think.

[andrew Ivimey]

I remember doing flashing lights with 7400 series and several rhythm 'devices ' . Then cmos happened and I built an electric piano which soon got modded into a polyphonic synth string machine sort of thing.

I still have my casio calculator for all the statistics calculations I had to wade through in college.

[Nick]

Yep, I remember that PE calculator.

Just had a search for it: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/practicalE ... -May73.pdf

[Paul Barker]

Talking of Casio, in 1976 my Mum and Dad invested in the latest technology and purchased a Calculator. I've just got it working again, yey!

That was the era when I read Economics at Hull University. We werent allowed calculators we had a slide rule log tables and pensil and sheets of paper to do our workings out on under exam conditions. Its a bit of a blurr now but vaguely recall about two weeks solid of final exams might have been longer working everything out the long way.looking back, it was sheer madness not allowing us to use what was by then proven technology. I was probably the last generation deprived of calculators in exams.

Actually same happened to me for around 6 years at British Gas. The gas rating formula is very long winded though mobile phone apps had come on the market. BG wouldn’t condone their use. We indicidual engineers used them when the bip man wasnt with us. Bip Man was the QA in house who came to three jobs with you every six months. The term bip is another can of worms, we wont divert to that. Eventually but took about 6 years BG had their own app writen for their work device. But you must use their app no general market app all phones could use. We still used our phone app when alone.

[brig001]

Got final bill number 7 from Octopus and it looks ok, but to be honest I’m so tired of the whole thing I have given up. £900 difference between the highest and the lowest final bill, so not trivial. Expecting money back in ten days

I have no idea how the average person on the street would figure this lot out

Brian

[Ray P]

Currently on a train heading for King's Cross after a trip up North to visit Steve C; Simon popped over too. It was very good to Steve 'back on his feet'. We enjoyed some very nice music and a good chat. Thanks are due to Mrs. C for looking after us.

Here's hoping we can have another get together later in the year.

[simon]

Yes it was really good to see Steve and yourself Ray. And it was good to see Steve looking well

[Ray P]

Cheers Simon, a little more time would have been nice, and a bit more air time for your Soekris DAC, but I guess you can pop over again...

[andrew Ivimey]

You see if we had HS2 we could all get oooop north 'just like that' but otoh, wasn't Steve's house scheduled for demolition? by the Vogons...

[Max N]

Been having a tidy up on the computer and came across this photo. In 2016 we visited a part of France with pretty dark skies (Astrofarm in Confolens).
This was a single 30 second shot of the Milky Way, ISO 3200, can't remember what lens but possibly a Rokinon 135mm. I've just given it a bit of a tweak in Affinity Photo but its pretty much as it came off the camera.

[andrew Ivimey]

Subtle beauty! reminds me if the cover of Mysterious Traveller by Weather Report. Lovely!