> -----Original Message----- > From: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org > [mailto:tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org]On Behalf Of Mike Miller > > I bought my first in 1974 during my junior year of HS. It > was a Sears > "Electronic Slide Rule." It had all the trig functions, log, > etc., to 8 > digits. I was amazed. It cost $108, I believe. It also > dropped by 1/2 > in about a year. I had saved my money from my paper route > for months to > buy that thing. It was definitely worth it. At that time, > it was the > only device anyone I knew had ever seen that could compute a log to 8 > digits, for example, and it did it almost instantly. Several kinds of applications require more than 8 digit precision. HP calculators are the only ones that have at least 10 digits of precision throughout. We could not use TI scientific calculators except as slide rule replacements because of their 8 digit limited precision. Discovering that 8 digits was not enough at all in these applications made a deep impression on me. Chuck