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| Texas Instruments SR-10 |
It started here, my first piece of digital horsepower in my hand: a
Texas Instruments TI SR-10 electronic slide rule -
a piece of gadget history. My undergraduate
physics class (1) in 1973 was the first to be able to use a calculator rather than a slide rule. I learned how to use a slide rule in
Boy Scouts as part of an Engineering Merit Badge
requirement - I had learned how to do simple math functions, but nothing very exotic - nothing like what engineers would do to design missiles or other complicated hardware. When I bought my calculator, it's price had just dropped from $160 to $120, so that seemed like a good price for a tool that could easily add, subtract, divide, multiply, do squares and square roots, along with exponentials and logs - what a deal. The funny thing was I bought it at the
Gottschalk's department store in town - this predated the 2001 start-up of Apple Stores (2). I keep the burned out hulk of its body in a frame that sits in my office - an honored relic of times past, and many gadgets since. The calculator has traveled from
Visalia to
Davis to
Fresno to
Corvallis to
Fresno to
Corvallis to
Beltsville and now to
Fort Collins.
_________________________
(1) It is still listed under the same course listing:
PSCI 020 Physical Science
Hours: 3 Lecture/Discussion 3 Lab
A
laboratory course in physical science designed to meet the laboratory
science requirement for transfer students who are not science majors.
Topics include concepts, theories and principles of physics, chemistry,
astronomy and earth science. The course provides opportunities for
students to learn reasoning skills and a new way of thinking about their
environment. Course will present applications of concepts and theories
to topics of current interest. Advisory on Recommended Preparation: MATH
200 or equivalent college course with a “C” or better or eligibility
for MATH 230 as determined by COS Placement Procedures; and ENGL 251 or
equivalent college course with “C” or better or eligibility for ENGL 1
determined by COS Placement Procedures.
(2) The Radio Shack specialty store supporting amateur ham radio operators was founded in 1921.
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