🚀 go-pugleaf

sgo...@pyrite.East.Sun.COM (Steve Golson) wrote:

> ObFolklore from the above book by Petroski, Chapter 15, "From Slide Rule
> to Computer: Forgetting How It Used To Be Done," p. 191:

>    In 1968, an article entitled "An Electronic Digital Slide Rule" appeared
> in _The Electronic Engineer_. [...]  In the article the authors, two General
> Electric engineers, described a prototype that they had built with some off-
> the-shelf digital integrated circuits.  Their "feasibility model" looked like
> an electric blanket control and, at 1.5 x 5 x 7 inches, it resembled a novel
> in size.

I find it odd that this was touted as a breakthrough that late.  I used a
commercially made pocket-sized electric calculator in New Zealand at the
end of 1967 or 1968; it cost several hundred dollars, so the lab kept it
screwed to a two-foot-square board to stop it being stolen.  Can't remember
the brand name but I think it was Japanese.

-- 
--  Jack Campin   Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
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