[HN Gopher] Soviet Calculators History (1998)
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Soviet Calculators History (1998)
Author : erikbye
Score : 42 points
Date : 2020-02-17 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.xnumber.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.xnumber.com)
| avmich wrote:
| Revers-engineering of B3-34 internals (in Russian):
| http://vak.ru/doku.php/proj/calculator/b3-34 .
| ruslan wrote:
| I loved my MK 85 a lot! When I was at school in late 80s I used
| to store complex physics and trigonometrics formulas in it as a
| BASIC program text. Those days using calculators was allowed on
| exams so this little electronic cheat-sheet saved my sole many
| times :-).
| [deleted]
| aswanson wrote:
| Max levchin stated he learned indirection in memory addressing
| because his mom was assigned to work calculator programming in
| the USSR before the family fled to the US in the early 90s.
| Amazing that a calculator had pointer features.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > the calculator combined not only the functions [+=] and [-=],
| but also the multiply-divide functions [X -:-].
|
| Very interesting. It finally solved the mystery for me. My aunt
| was an accountant and she had one of those in her office. I
| remember looking at the keyboard and wondering how in the world
| you're supposed to divide and multiply with a single button. [-=]
| seems to be something like "invert the previous operation and
| then produce the result"
| AGivant wrote:
| It was a joke in Soviet Union that our Micro calculators are the
| biggest in the world!
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| _To calculate (20 - 8 + 7) it was necessary to press the
| following keys [C] [2][0] [+ =] [8] [-=] [7] [+=]. Result: 5. To
| multiply the result, say by 3, the calculation could be continued
| by pressing the keys: [X] [3] [+=]. A [K] key was used for
| calculations with a constant._
|
| When you design a product with a a committee of 27 engineers..
|
| _A group of 27 engineers were assigned to this complex problem.
| It was a huge project which involved: producing the drawings,
| circuit and patterns consisting of 144 thousand points required
| to fit a microprocessor with 3400 elements within a 5x5 mm
| crystal._
| mNovak wrote:
| Don't old HP scientific calculators have a similar syntax?
|
| It's actually pretty logical; there's a running total, and you
| decide what to do with the number you just typed in, after
| typing it. Costs an extra button press to 'add' the first
| number to the total, I suppose.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| No, HP calculators were more efficient it would seem with
| their RPN.
|
| "20 ENTER 8 ENTER - 7 ENTER +"
|
| So you push 20 onto the stack and then 8 on the stack. Then
| you hit the minus key which returns 12 and puts that 12 on
| the stack, then you put 7 on the stack and click the plus key
| to give you 19.
| [deleted]
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| > In general, the first models of calculators had their own
| operational language, and the user had to learn the specific
| procedures related to each calculator. Let's take, for example,
| the C3-07, the first calculator of the Series "C" manufactured by
| the Leningrad factory "Svetlana."
|
| Forgive the focus on tangential information, but I'm curious, was
| this factory named after Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva?
| If so, it would seem a little strange that the factory would
| remain in the '70s with this name long after Khrushchev's secret
| speech and the subsequent de-Stalinization that took place to
| deconstruct the influence of Stalin's cult of personality. I
| can't seem to find any real info on the factory with a google
| search, but does strike me as curious.
| erikbye wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_(company)
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| D'oh!
|
| I must have used too many search terms in my query. Thanks
| for providing the link. Appears the company was founded in
| the late 1800s, so certainly not named after Stalin's
| daughter.
| rdtsc wrote:
| A sibling post noticed it seems to be an abbreviation related
| to electrical lights, but it is worth mentioning that Svetlana
| is just a common name. Like say, Jenny or Stacy. A few my
| teachers had that name, for example. The shortened version,
| "Sveta" is also common.
|
| It would be different, for example, if it was an extremely rare
| name shared with Stalin's daughter.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| Yes, it would appear it is a common name in Russia. Though,
| in the late '70s (and perhaps even now), I believe Stalin's
| daughter was still the most famous person bearing the name.
| And me being ignorant of both this particular factory and its
| origins couldn't help but wonder (knowing the Soviet
| propensity for naming things in honor of the leaders - e.g.
| Stalingrad, Leningrad, etc.) if there happened to be any
| relation.
| [deleted]
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