Computers & Business Machines

Texas Instruments Little Professor Teaching Calculator

Description

Introduced in mid-1976, the Little Professor is a non-printing electronic calculator modified to present simple arithmetic problems. A correct answer prompts another problem on the eight-digit display. An error delivers the message, "EEE." The colorful keyboard shows a professor with whiskers and glasses. The red light-emitting diode screen, in combination with the top of the instrument, looks like a mortar board.

This example has buttons that allow one to set the level of problems, as well as an on/off button on the front rather than the side of the machine. These features were introduced in a version of the machine made from 1978 onward.

Reference:

P. A. Kidwell, A. Ackerberg-Hastings, and D. L. Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, pp. 261–262.

date made

ca 1978

maker

Texas Instruments

ID Number

1986.0988.197

accession number

1986.0988

catalog number

1986.0988.197

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Texas Instruments SR-10 Handheld Electronic Calculator

Description

This is an example of the first model of a scientific calculator marketed by Texas Instruments. The handheld electronic calculator has a black and ivory-colored plastic case with an array of twenty-three plastic keys. Twenty-one of these are square, the 0 and the total keys are rectangular. In addition to ten digit keys, a decimal point key, a total key, and four arithmetic function keys, the calculator has a reciprocal key, a square key, a square root key, a change sign key, an enter exponent key, a clear key, and a clear display key. Text above the keyboard, just below the display and to the left, reads: SR10. Behind the keyboard is a 12-digit LED display. Numbers larger than eight digits are displayed in scientific notation. A mark behind the display reads: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS. An on/off switch is right and slightly above this.

The back edge of the calculator has a jack for a recharger/adapter. A sticker on the back gives extensive instructions. It also gives the serial number SR10 275812.

Unscrewing screws near the top and bottom of the back reveals the workings of the calculator. It has a total of five chips. The largest of these is marked TMS 0120 NC (/) C7333. This is a TMS0120 chip, manufactured in mid-1973. Also in the case is space for three AA nickel-cadmium batteries.

The leather zippered case has both a loop and a hook for attaching the calculator to a belt. It also holds an instruction pamphlet entitled Texas Instruments electronic slide rule calculator SR-10, copyrighted 1973. A warranty registration on the inside of the back page indicates these instructions were originally sold with an SR-10 calculator with serial number 170334, purchased on September 27, 1973.

Texas Instruments described the SR-10 as an “electronic slide rule calculator,” hence the “SR” in the name. The first version of the device, introduced in 1972, did not have the mark SR-10 on the keyboard. The second version (introduced 1973) and the third (introduced 1975) did. This is an example of the first version. According to Ball & Flamm, it initially sold for $149.95.

Compare 1986.0988.351, 1986.0988.354, and 1986.0988.356.

References:

Guy Ball and Bruce Flamm, The Complete Collector’s Guide to Pocket Calculators, Tustin, CA: Wilson/Barnett, 1997, p. 153.

The online Datamath Museum includes versions of the SR-10 from 1972, 1973, and 1975.

date made

1972

Date made

1973

maker

Texas Instruments

ID Number

1986.0988.354

catalog number

1986.0988.354

accession number

1986.0988

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Software, Basic for the Altair on Paper Tape

Description

In the mid-1960s, Dartmouth College professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz developed a computer language intended to be easy to learn and use. They called it BASIC--Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Students learned BASIC on a teletype terminal that communicated with a central computer. Several terminals were linked to one computer as part of a system called timesharing. Students on remote terminals could use the computer without seeing it--or even knowing what kind of computer it was. This particular BASIC tape was used with an MITS Altair 8800, a later microcomputer.

date made

ca 1975

ID Number

1986.0463.24

catalog number

1986.0463.24

accession number

1986.0463

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Hewlett-Packard HP-35 Handheld Electronic Calculator

Description

The HP-35 was the first handheld electronic calculator to display all the functions represented on a slide rule. It has a black plastic case and a total of thirty-five square or rectangular plastic keys. These include ten digit keys, a decimal point key and a pi key, all colored tan. In addition there are four arithmetic function left of the digit keys, a relatively long enter key, a change sign key, an enter exponent key, a clear x key, and a clear key, all in blue. Additional black keys are for powers, logs to base ten, natural logs, exponents, square roots, trigonometric functions (sine, cosine, tangent and the inverses of these), simple inverses, exchange, roll down, store, and recall. Above the keys is an on-off switch. There is no hole next to the switch to indicate that the display is on, as there was in the very first HP-35 calculators. Behind the switch is a red LED display that shows results. Numbers with absolute value between one hundredth and 10 billion are given in decimal form. Smaller or larger figures appear in scientific notation, with the appropriate power of ten occupying the three rightmost digit places (two for digits, one for a sign). The negative sign for the result, if needed, is at the far left. A mark on the front edge of the calculator reads: hp HEWLETT•PACKARD.

The back of the calculator has a plug for a three-prong power adapter, a compartment for a battery pack, four rubber feet, and a sticker entitled: HEWLETT•PACKARD MODEL 35 INSTRUCTIONS. Text below the sticker reads: HEWLETT-PACKARD (/) 3.75V 500MW (/) MADE IN USA PATENT PENDING. A sticker inside the battery pack reads: HEWLETT-PACKARD (/) SER.NO. 1249A 11780. The portion 1249 of the serial number indicates that it was made in the forty-ninth week of 1972. A red sticker on the lid of the battery pack reads: CAUTION (/) USE ONLY H. P. BATTERY PACK (/) MODEL NO 82001A (/) OTHER BATTERIES MAY DAMAGE CIRCUITS. A sticker on the outside top of the calculator reads: PROPERTY OF (/) Dr. R. E. Zupko.

In addition to the calculator, the gray plastic case contains a power adapter (1991.0210.01.2) labeled in part: HEWLETT - PACKARD (/) MODEL 82002A. It also has a carrying pouch (1991.0210.1.3). For the related manual, see 1991.0210.02.

In this and a few other early HP-35 electronic calculators, entering the function 2.02 ln (e ^x) gave a result of 2 rather than 2.02. In this example, the owner chose not to have the error fixed.

The donor, Ronald E. Zupko, was an historian of weights and measures and a professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

References:

W.A.C. Mier-Jedrzejowicz, A Guide to HP Handheld Calculators and Computers , Tustin, California: Wilson/Burnett Publishing, 1997, pp. 36–39, 132.

David G. Hicks, The Museum of HP Calculators, http://www.hpmuseum.org/, accessed July, 2014.

Thomas M. Whitney, France Rodé, and Chung C. Tung, “The ‘Powerful Pocketful’: an Electronic Calculator Challenges the Slide Rule,” Hewlett-Packard Journal, June 1972, pp. 2-9.

Accession file.

date made

1972

maker

Hewlett-Packard Company

ID Number

1991.0210.01.1

catalog number

1991.0210.01.1

accession number

1991.0210

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Simon Electronic Game, 1978

Description

The Father of the Video Game was also the inventor of Simon.

Inventor Ralph Baer is best known for developing the first video game system, but he accomplished far more. In 1975, Baer started an independent consulting business and began to work in association with Marvin Glass & Associates in Chicago, the toy design firm responsible for some of the most successful American toys of the 20th century. Baer’s job was to develop electronic toys and games. The best-known result of this partnership was Simon.

Named for the children’s game of “Simon Says,” the game was inspired by an Atari arcade game called Touch Me. Baer and Howard Morrison, a partner at Marvin Glass, first saw Touch Me at a trade show in 1976. Both agreed that while the execution of the arcade game was horrible, the game itself—trying to repeat a musical sequence the machine created—was worthy of exploration. The two set about creating a handheld game around the same concept.

Like Touch Me, Simon had four different colored buttons. Each button played a unique note. Players had to be able to repeat an increasingly long string of tones that Simon created. If you got the order wrong, you lost. Baer was aware that choosing Simon’s four tones was a critical decision. He and Morrison both felt that one of Touch Me’s main failings was that its sounds were unpleasant.

But how to choose four notes that could be played in any sequence and not hurt the ears? Baer found the answer while looking through his children’s Compton's Encyclopedia. He discovered that the bugle can only plays four notes. So, Simon would play those same four bugle notes.

Simon was released by Milton Bradley in 1978 with much fanfare, including a midnight release party at Studio 54, the elite disco in New York City. An instance success, the game reached its peak during the 1980s and continued to sell for decades thereafter.

Baer was very careful to document in his patent application that Simon was based on Atari’s Touch Me, given his past history with the company. Years earlier, Atari was sued for patent rights infringement. At the center of the controversy were the video game prototypes invented by Ralph Baer. With Simon, Baer found himself on the other side of the story. His patent was to protect his innovations, rather than an original game idea.

Date made

1978

inventor

Baer, Ralph H.

manufacturer

Milton Bradley Company

ID Number

2006.0102.09

catalog number

2006.0102.09

accession number

2006.0102

Data Source

National Museum of American History

IBM SCAMP

Description

Some personally operated computers, such as this one, came from companies traditionally associated with larger machines. In late 1972, the IBM General Systems Division in Atlanta, Georgia, asked the IBM Scientific Center in Palo Alto, California, to develop a product that would raise the visibility of the programming language APL. Paul Friedl and his colleagues in Palo Alto spent six months developing this pioneering portable computer, known as the SCAMP (Special Computer, APL Machine Portable). The prototype used existing components - a cathode ray tube from Bell Brothers, Inc., for the display; a Norelco audiotape cassette recorder for secondary storage; a keyboard from IBM in Raleigh, North Carolina; memory cards from IBM Germany; and a PALM microprocessor board from IBM in Boca Raton, Florida. The APL language processor emulated one for the existing, much larger, IBM 1130 computer.

The SCAMP is designed to be a portable and folds into a suitcase-like frame. The upper part, including the monitor, pops up when in use. The frame is chocolate brown and the cover and upper part are almond white.

Friedl and his colleagues used the SCAMP in over one hundred demonstrations. A menu on the screen indicated possible uses – as a calculator or for financial analysis, project planning, educational drill, engineering analysis, or statistical analysis. The machine served as a prototype for the IBM 5100 portable computer, a machine announced in 1975 that sold for between $8975 and $19,575 and found a range of applications. Some consider the SCAMP as the grandfather of the highly successful IBM Personal Computer (IBM 5150), introduced in 1981.

References:

Paul J. Friedl, “SCAMP: The Missing Link in the PC’s Past?” PC Mag: The Independent Guide to IBM Personal Computers, November 1983, vol. 2 no.6, pp. 190-197.

Jonathan Littman, “The First Portable Computer: The Genesis of SCAMP, Grandfather of the Personal Computer,” PC World, October 1983, pp. 294-300.

Date made

1973

maker

IBM

IBM

ID Number

1988.0681.01

catalog number

1988.0681.01

accession number

1988.0681

Data Source

National Museum of American History