[LDB]

I'm not sure what calculator they were referring to or where they got their information but here's the scoop from the front lines. In 1973 Texas Instruments brought out their new hand calculator, the SR-10. It was just a few weeks before Christmas. I worked at a major department store in Houston, my first job. This calculator would add, subtract, multiply and divide AND it would do square root. We would get them in a case lot of a dozen. They were $99.95 retail. Every NASA engineer wanted one and their wives were calling every day to see if we had them in stock. On the day we'd get them we'd sell out. A hundred dollars in 1973 is probably the same as somewhere around $600 now. It replaced all the slide rules the engineers ran around with and was a big deal only because of the square root key. I can't imagine what things will be like 35 years from now. When I saw that SR-10 I never imagined the IPAQ and other hand held computers. It will be interesting to see what happens.