Slide rules to calculators was an incredibly fast technology transition for the sort of people who would have been using slide rules in the first place.
A 5-function calculator was about $100 in 1974 (so about $350 in current dollars) and an HP scientific calculator was 3 or 4x as much. By about the next year, a TI scientific calculator was about the same and by a year or two later you could get an HP--which was the gold standard for about the same amount.
And that was around the price point where making them not just OK to use but mandatory was reasonable at least in higher ed. I was one of the first classes in college where calculators were the norm and slide rules were maybe something you brought for backup at exams. (Calculators were still LEDs so you had to keep them charged.)
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Slide rules to calculators was an incredibly fast technology transition for the sort of people who would have been using slide rules in the first place.
A 5-function calculator was about $100 in 1974 (so about $350 in current dollars) and an HP scientific calculator was 3 or 4x as much. By about the next year, a TI scientific calculator was about the same and by a year or two later you could get an HP--which was the gold standard for about the same amount.
And that was around the price point where making them not just OK to use but mandatory was reasonable at least in higher ed. I was one of the first classes in college where calculators were the norm and slide rules were maybe something you brought for backup at exams. (Calculators were still LEDs so you had to keep them charged.)