Tools of my mathematical work

These are the Mathematical tools that I have been exposed to in my days from grade school to today.



In grade school, a yellow wood pencil, I don't have one anymore, and a piece of paper. Which I do have. The Lennes book of the multiplication tables. Chalk and the classroom blackboard.



In high school, a comptometer, a mechanical calculating machine that could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and with difficulty division.



In college a slide rule, in its leather case with the metal ring which attached to leather strap around my belt, this was the holster in which I carried my slipstick. This took care of the multiplication and division. Adding and Subtracting required the use of the grey matter.



When working at GE in the 1960's, I used a Merchant mechanical calculator.



In 1972, in San Francisco, on noon hour, while walking down the street, in a shop window, I saw an electronic Sharp ELSI 8 hand held electronic 4 function calculator. I was working on a ship's lineshaft problem, using the office mechanical calculator, which had an internal fault, that sometimes it would keep running and the only way to stop it was to pull the electric plug.

So I went in and bought one, for $300, it did the 4 functions +-x & divide. If I wanted one memory it was $1oo more. When I got back to the office and showed it to my boss, he said "You bought that! I'm not paying for it!"



Later HP came out with a handheld 41, and when I saw it, I bought one. Since then HP kept bringing out new models, all at $300, and I kept buying them. In the 1980's they came out with the HP 11 and HP12 models. These were $99 each, and I bought 4 of them. One for me and one for each of my daughters. These calculators are still in use, and HP is still selling basically the same calculators today, for about $70.



In the 1980's HP came out with a portable computer with a single line of display that you drew a foot long 1/4" wide piece of plastic recording tape through to save your work. Of course I bought one.



Then Radio Shack had a laptop computer that ran the Deskmate Operating System. Of course I got one. That was before IBM came out with the Personal Computer and got Bill Gates to supply the operating system, DOS, Disk Operating System, which he bought from a guy in Seattle for $50,000.



Then Office Max opened a store in Great Falls, and they had a HP Computer which, it is a given that I had to have. Then a used laptop I bought from a guy who advertised it in the paper.



And after a few more laptops, I saw an ad for an ASUS Eee PC netbook. This I had to have, and now am using my second and third ASUS netbooks.



So that is the history of my mathematical adventures.