The Dark Side of the Moon

In 1972…

The HP35 was down to $267 by then and the new HP45 was $400. But few students could afford them, thus the “no calculators” rule. I graduated in 1970, but worked in construction and as a surveyor for ten years before taking the test. By then, engineering colleges weren’t even teaching how to use a sliderule anymore. It’s a lost talent except amongst us dinosaurs.

I gave mine to my grandson last year after he was admitted to Georgia Tech. I didn’t expect him to ever use it…just keep it as an heirloom.

P.S.
He made a 4.0 in his first quarter. I think he’s destined to be an honor student.

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The other thing which has disappeared is log tables. I found an old 4-digit set which we had at school. I wondered if people learned maths better when having to understand what they were doing with a book of logs, although my son now teaches fluid mechanics so I guess you either have it … or you don’t.

That’s 3 people I now know who are/were in construction engineering, not including the Sarg who still builds houses with his son.

One of my favorite characteristics of the HP48GX is that it uses 3-AAA cells for a battery.

We had UIL competitions for both slide rule and calculator math when I was in HS.

That was the transitional period.

My first calculator was a TI-1250 which was top of the line in 76 and obsolete by 77.

The race is on !

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/outer-space-gold-rush-wall-155827359.html

On the radio this morning … China claims to have persuaded at least one plant to grow on the moon

No more details as yet…

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Ditto. Love RPN.

My history includes
HP25C (and maybe an.hp25 without the memory. Too long ago)
HP41C
HP48C? (Actually not sure of suffix. It does graph so maybe G?) Edit: it’s an SX. But it needs reset or something. It beeps with a key press. But screen is blank.

But I use MS excel and macros I write now for just about everything. Matlab for the remainder.

For arithmetic, of course I just use my stupid cell phone calculator or do it in my head. Memorizing log values from 2 to 9 and some first order terms of common taylor series can get you just about any answer to a couple decimal places. It’s more mental exercise to keep my brain from turning to mush than it is a necessity.

We shall see how well the Chinese fair.

I am less impressed with any initial achievement than with our ( or anyone’s) ability to troubleshoot and fix or adapt to problems from so far away.

There is also the issue of lessons learned from experience. I confess I remember this one because I had the privilege of being close to the spacecraft and some of its designers.

Galileo… we (the office to which I was assigned) treated JPL like a contractor… which they are in a sense. I had funded some programs there in the 80s and so they treated me like a valued customer and gave me personal tours and access that got me close to Galileo as I watched them with some “testing”. They were checking it out for the Nth time since its launch had been delayed. Each checkout was through… including opening and unfolding the data link antenna. It made sense. They had to ensure everything was still working after the delays and ground and air transportation that occured because of delays. “Lessons learned” told them that they needed to verify full functionality.

So imagine their surprise when the antenna had a problem opening. Why did it fail? It was kinda a lesson learned about ignorantly responding to lessons learned. Yes… they needed to test and recheck the antenna after so many delays and previous tests due to previous delays. But all the testing wore off the lubricants on the ribs of the antenna. So it didn’t open. Still… we adapted and completed much of what the spacecraft was supposed to do. This kind of lesson learned comes only with experience.

Aside from the lack of experience, I respect the Chinese. I have even used some of the signal processing research published out of one of the Universities in Bejing.
I have long valued research out of certain lesser developed countries. Why? Because they spend more time and effort compensating for less technology by applying greater analytical rigor in their preliminary work. We ( in my opinion) can’t wait to run some computer program or make a machine spin. My experience tells me that scientific thinking and understanding is one of the first casualties after the programmers take over. YMMV.

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Weaponized Kudzu probably.

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Well, here we go, two articles about the sprouting plants.
Disappointingly the best picture is on CNN :triumph:
Nascent plant is on the left of the picture
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/15/asia/china-moon-cotton-intl/index.html

Unfortunately the numpty at the BBC obviously didn’t know which bit of the picture was interesting, and cut out the part with the plant in it!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-46873526

Random fact: it was called a PDP-8 because it had just 8 instructions.

You can buy a kit computer that is somewhat similar in concept, just a lot faster:

Edit: they apparently updated the ROM

When I started work, I worked repairing and commissioning Honeywell-716 computer systems and component cards (boards about 12-inches square). It was part of my ‘apprenticeship’ on the way to becoming a development engineer. The cpu was assembled from 7400 series logic, the memory was magnetic core with 16k words per board (when I was working on them) and the PROM had not been invented.

After a couple of months I had memorised the 16-word paper-tape boot loader sequence which was required to bring up new or recovered (from a crash) systems. The paper tape was read through a reader optionally fitted to Teletype remote consoles. 300-bps was considered fast, the first versions ran at 110-bps! Within 18 months I was writing comms software in assembly-code on microprocessors, the intel 8080 in particular.

I thought a PDP-8 was so called because it had an 8k-word memory address range, although I never actually studied those machines … so probably I’m completely wrong.

My mom worked with punch cards. She had a stack that gave her free paper from the printers.

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I learned Basic and Fortran programming on an IBM 1620.

In High School (1969-1973) we learned BASIC. Our “Computer Science” lab, had a Digital PDP-8L computer. The input device was a teletype terminal. Storage was on paper tape (punched holes)

I didn’t know what a 48GX was, so I internet searched it. Some place called porterelectronics is selling used ones for about $300.

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Yeah, I learned FORTRAN on punch cards. The last class at that school to do so.

I’ve downloaded an emulator but cannot make it work.

I had thought man crashed forever once…but I searched for a solution to the problem for a long time. Only certain keys on the far right side would not function. I finally found an anecdote wherein the same problem was discussed. One genius had found that the problem was evidently due to loosening of a connection just below the face of the device and could be remedied by applying slight pressure at the center of the screen frame just below the center of the screen. Worked like a charm.

A rubber band around the calculator just below the screen with a small object beneath it at the center worked for a long time. Now I have to apply pressure with my thumb as I operate.

I may very well look into purchasing a used one. I consider it the best hand held calculator known to man.

Thanks.