On 8/28/2012 4:23 PM, usher99@xxxxxxx wrote:
. . .
Thanks for mentioning the Nixie tubes--enabled me to probably find
the beasty. If this isn't it ,it is close to what I used.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/sharp.jpg
The very thing! Although I bought 10 digit models. A little while ago, I wrote:
On 3/5/2004 2:38 AM, Moose wrote:
It is easy to forget that new technology is often worth more than the high initital cost. When I was a young analyst
crunching numbers, we used mechanical calculating machines with thousands of moving parts. They had to be on
maintenance contracts to keep them running for $60 (that's 1970 $) per month. I did some research when electronic
calculators became available. One model actually used a B/W CRT, making it a huge thing. I recommended that we buy
some much smaller ones using individual Nixie numeric display vacuum tubes and discrete logic on complex circuit
boards. You can buy equivalent computing power (except they were 10 place machines) for less than $5 today. However,
they were a bargain, as they paid off their $600+ [~$3,600 in 2016 $] purchase price in lack of maintenance in about
10-11 months and lasted for years. They were also a big boost to productivity because they were FAST. We used to joke
that one guy with a particularly slow mechanical model kept it because he could crank in a full length long division
problem, leave work 15 minutes early and no one would know he left early.
Most of what they replaced looked like this, except I think they said SCM on them, but were before the Modern Beige
redesign. <https://images.ehive.com/accounts/5254/objects/images/1jg539v_8f4k_l.jpg>
We also had one of these. <http://www.hpmuseum.org/friden.jpg>
I think I still have one like this in my basement.
<http://public.beuth-hochschule.de/hamann/facit/f-ca1/facit-ca1.jpg>
Soooo much cuter than the big boys, but stone slow by comparison.
Apropos the thread that ended up here, here's one calculating π.
<http://ytune.pk/watch/-327eDxal-E/calculation-of-pi-nearly-on-a-facit-ca1-13-electric-pinwheel-calculator.html>
Calculating Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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