The year was 1976 and I was in 6th grade struggling with long division. My dad was an electrical engineer and he had just purchased a Texas Instruments TI-30 calculator. I had a huge long division assignment and I used it to help me finish my homework. Mrs. Carlson immediately realized an exponential increase in my grades in math. Suspicious, during a parent-teacher conference she brought it up. My dad told her I had been using his calculator. Mrs. Carlson asked my dad if he would not mind me bringing it in to show the class. My dad, being an engineer, and a lover of new technology, saw this as a great opportunity to showcase some amazing tech as he was a slide-rule guy being one of the first in his company to transitions to the faster, more accurate calculator. He still taught me to use a slide rule and I still have his first one he bought in college.
I brought it in expecting to be showing off something amazing. Instead, Mrs. Carlson turned on me with great venom explaining to the entire class how I was a cheat and a liar. I remember her words clearly, after she explained to us all what a calculator was as no other kids in my class even knew they existed. “Calculators are a passing fad. No one will ever be able to afford these and besides, no one will want to buy them. These are tools for astronauts and NASA, not people like us.” About 10 years later Mrs. Carlson’s words replayed in my head when I bought my first solar powered scientific calculator at K-Mart.
I remember telling my wife that story when I wanted to purchase our first CD player. She said it was “a passing fad,” those exact words. I’m typing this post on my iPad even though I could just as easily dictate words to it and it would do the typing for me. As a pilot I was trained to do it all by hand, using slide rules and paper maps. I still have my first “wiz wheel” and I still know how to use it, but I’m glad I don’t. I only miss parts of the dead reckoning days but there’s no way I’d ever go back to that. I’ll take GPS over flying VOR vectors any day. I get to spend more time looking out the window enjoying the scenery. But I still bring along paper maps, you know, just in case. One major electrical failure in flight reinforced that lesson. And I still suck at long division.
