I have lived long enough to witness more technological changes in one lifetime than at any other period in history.  One might describe it as a journey from turning knobs to touching screens. And the changes just keep coming.

Music alone has evolved from 33 RPM and 45 RPM records to 8-track tapes, cassette players, CDs, DVDs, and now streaming and downloading, which describe the medium and process for obtaining your favorite songs.

My grandchildren have no idea what a party line was, much less that I grew up watching a three-channel television with rabbit ears. Mention phone booths, road maps, drive-in theaters, or encyclopedias to a Generation Alpha, and they will look at you as if you are speaking Klingon.

Well, you get the idea.  The only thing constant is change, and in the past century, that change has accelerated at a dizzying pace.

One change I distinctly remember is the advent of the calculator.

But before the calculator, there was the slide rule. 

During my first years at Georgia Tech (1969-1971), I had five calculus, three physics, and three chemistry classes.  Calculations were something a Tech student did in their sleep.  I crunched numbers so often that my trusty slide rule was a constant companion. These “mechanical analog computers” had been around for centuries. They performed various mathematical calculations, primarily multiplication and division, as well as powers, roots, and trigonometric functions.  If you went to Georgia Tech, a slide rule was a necessity.

During the glory years of slide rule use, I remember races to see how quickly someone could calculate an answer with their slide rule. Who says nerds can’t have fun?

When calculators first emerged, they revolutionized the field. As useful as a slide rule was, the calculator was faster and more accurate. When they initially entered the market in the early 1970s, they were quite pricey. I remember Texas Instruments referred to their handheld SR-10 model as an “electronic slide rule calculator,” hence the “SR” in the name. It performed only basic functions such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square roots. It sold at a retail price of $150.

At that time, Georgia Tech professors prohibited students from using calculators in class and during exams. The reason was straightforward: few could afford them, and those who could would have had an advantage over their peers.

Later in the 1970s, prices dropped significantly, and today a simple calculator can be purchased for just a dollar at any Dollar General store.

But in 1972, I lusted for a calculator. Like a man in the desert without water, I craved this new mathematical ciphering marvel to satisfy my number-crunching needs. “Please, Dad,” I begged, “buy me a TI SR-10!”

Keep in mind that $150 in 1972 is roughly equivalent to about $1,200 today. As you might suspect, my dad was not initially receptive to the idea. However, since I was a CO-OP student and my job every other quarter helped cover around 70% of my college expenses, he was more willing to help. One day, he asked me to meet him at his cousin’s business. His first cousin, Clay Pentecost, operated a business machine sales shop on Ponce de Leon Ave in downtown Atlanta. He sold adding machines (the old mechanical kind) along with typewriters. With the rise of calculators, he began to stock and sell these new electronic wonders. Dad reached out to him, and Clay offered to sell him one at cost. So, in 1972, I received my first handheld electronic calculator, a Texas Instruments SR-10, for the princely sum of $110.  

Though I was never able to use it in a classroom exam, it did help me do my homework faster.

You may wonder, whatever happened to my trusty slide rule? It sits in a display case, reminiscing about its illustrious past, vigilant and always ready to regain its former glory as it declares with hopeful certainty, “In case of low battery, break glass.”