It’s odd when the calculators you grew up with are now “vintage”. Not as bad as seeing the PDP11/10 computer I learned to program on in a museum. Now that really makes you feel old! 😂 😢

My dad was born in 1906 and was an accountant his entire working life. Started with slide rule for complicated calculations, but used pencil and paper for most. He had a small mechanical adding machine (4 inches by 11 inches by 1/2 inch thick) that you dialed like a phone using a stylus. Progressed to regular mechanical adding machines, then electric adding machines that were really cool to watch run. Used printing electronic calculators in the late 70's. Those were $300-400 when new.

My Dad's company supplied their salesmen with Casio Elsi-88s. (ca. 1972) Don't even ask why I can still remember the model... It was handheld (brick) with built in ni-cd batteries, vf display and "indestructible" *reed switch* keypad (how many quadrillion cycles will those things do?). In my curious youth, after he retired it, I dissected it. The vf digits were discrete tubes, it had a crazy collection of ceramic ASIC wafers, and damn near every pin was heavy gold plated (none of this modern 2-atom thick electroplating). Sadly, all the parts are gone to the winds of time. It would be an interesting trinket to still have. I could always use it as intruder retribution on my nightstand. Cops: you beat them to death with a hand held calculator? Me: yep, and it still works! Lol.

Looking at that TI calculator brought back memories of my first calculator. My mother bought me a TI scientific calculator when I was at university, must have been 1970. It had a red plastic lens, with a cream colored main body and a darker top around the LCD display. To think that today my tablet has a thousand times or more power of my first 1983 desk top computer (CPM operating system, single sided single density floppies with no hard drive), which had a lot more memory and power than my 1981 HP typewriter with 24 kb of memory. I still used that old TI in the early 80s and yes the LCD display was drying out. Not sure what happened to it but it's long gone. My mobile phone has a calculator these days! Nice video as always!!

That's a great collection of calculators! Fun stuff and great memories. My dad worked for Burroughs from the early 60s to the late 80s as a mainframe field engineer, and continued with third party maintenance companies until he retired in the 2000s. I grew up with all kinds of calculators around the house the were trade-ins when folks bought new Burroughs adders / calculators. We had electromechanical Fridens, Monroes, NCRs, an older Burroughs models, as well as some "all electronic" Burroughs with Nixie tubes. They were HUGE and heavy - The size of a modern PC. They were great fun and very helpful for my homework! Later, when I started JR HS, my parents bought me an early TI calculator for something like $70 (late 70s dollars!) that saw me through HS. It could do square roots just like the Friden and I could carry it to class! WOOOOO. :) So yeah - this vid was a bit of a blast from the past for me! Thanks!

In 1973 my dad took me to the boss of IBM Italy's house to see his home computer. Four of us squeezed into the remaining space of a large bedroom - the rest of the space being occupied by computer hardware. No VDU - output was all via printer. And the miracles it could perform! It could work out your biorhythms, given your birthday, in seconds! And not much else. Goodness knows where the hardware ended up. About a year later I was given a 'pocket' (would have to have been reinforced and fairly large) calculator. I can't remember the manufacturer but it was feature laden - it could do square roots and percentages! Flash as! It also had a green LED screen (very nice...and unusual in those days) and the nicest keypress ever - hard rubber keys with a weighted springy movement and a tiny click at the end of their travel, to let you know. Early 1980 saw me staying late at school to play with the 'computer' - a dumb terminal with a phone modem to a local university computer. Again - no VDU - which made 'moon lander' a bit tricky. Late 1980 and I'm at uni - and we had to use the uni computer. You hand punched cards and deposited them in a box outside the computer department and collected the result 24 hours later from another box. The next year we had a new computer - it was so small that it was installed in the same computer room, between the stacks of the old one. Once a week we spent an afternoon in the terminal room - mainly hacking each others accounts and tampering with the work. Unfortunately I have one of those mothers that would throw things away if they were broken/unused for long/not guarded with wire and dogs so didn't get to keep any of the wonderful early tech that passed my way. To make up for it I live in a mess of speaker cabinets, guitars, old effects pedals, dodgy cables and big boys toys. Much better.

I was hunting for something else and found my TI programmable 58C I got senior year of high school. Plugged in the charger and got random segments. Popped out the NiCd battery pack and it had leaked badly. Good thing was most of the salt had stayed in the plastic case for the pack, only a little had wicked out through the contacts onto the circuit board. Was able to clean it and no tracks were eaten away. It won't run on the charger without a battery, but I found that an electrolytic cap can simulate a battery well enough to get it to work. And it seems to function properly so yay! I forgot how cool looking those old LEDs with the very thin segments were. I also forgot how dim those were, bright LED lights on the bench swamp out the calculator display. Battery pack was welded plastic so had to cut it in half so I could put the back of the calculator back on without the leaky cells. Maybe I'll design and 3D print a holder for some NiMH batts so it can be used normally again.

My Dad, who was born in 1912, was a number-crunching addict and had a big, 50-pound Burroughs manual adding machine that he'd get out once a year at tax time during my childhood. He was set in his ways in all things -- but he was an early adopter of the TI calculator and was amazed at getting something out of all the NASA tax dollars he paid in. Calculators were a giant-leap technological advance that filtered down quickly to the civilian population -- even bigger deal to those who were still using slide rules.

That last calculator was beautiful! If I had one, it would *almost* be worth it to use a trigonometry table together with it, instead of having a calculator which does that for you. Thanks for this, Fran, and thanks to the lady who donated these to you.

All those vintage calculators, add up to a fantastic collection.😁

This video reminded me that I still have my old Texas Instruments SR10 in the basement. Well I fired it up but unfortunately it's shot. It uses a red LED display. Paper work says I bought it on May 20th, 1974. Thanks Fran.

That sound of the printer-calculator brings back memories of me working at the state of Alaska as a grant administrator; the eight feet long tapes; working overtime every June to close out the fiscal year. I needed a new calculator every year.

Great Calculator Collection and fun video Fran.

That was an awesome collection from Nancy. Thanks Nancy!! And thanks for being patient! :-) Too bad a few were the worse for wear. You will save the ones that can be saved. The last "Big Boy" was awesome! Brand New, and the ribbon still had ink! The only thing I don't like about that last one is it reminds me of doing inventory at work. Ugh!! (Someone else did it this year, Phew!!).

7/10 not enough HP!

Dear Fran! Thank you.

I see, my dad used to use calculators with VFD display, never knew until now, remembering it feels so nostalgic

The TI-5650 has a holder for the paper roll - it's on the bottom on the unit and folds up :)

Looking at the part of my collection in my office, I have one of those TI-2550 LED unit that works well. Another relic is a 4-banger Commodore Minuteman * 6. Both made in the USA. Another collection, that some would ask why, is series of battery testers from Radio Shack and Craftsman.

Wow! My dad had that same TI from 10:30. That was the first digital calculator I was exposed to. My grandparents gave me an LED-based TI-55 that got me most of the way through college (until a roommate lost it - grrrr). I always wished I had the TI-58 or -59, and was slightly jealous of HP owners, but I have fond memories of the lightly-programmable TI-55.

I have an old Litton 4 digit Nixie calculator that used a wired stylus to touch conductive pads for user entry. It was rechargeable and portable. Lost the power adapter but I opened the case and applied power directly to it and it still worked.

I probably have over a dozen calculators. Always looking for the perfect one

I can't remember the last time I used a printing calculator, or adding machine. I have one or two stashed somewhere. The sound of that TI-5650 makes me want to find them.

That Duracell perfectly illustrates everything I say about them these days. Some great items made it through the sands of time.

Such a nice letter Fran

I wish I could give you a chance to see my collection. I have a Smith Corona Marchant Cogito 240SR (I think it was made around 1965), a Friden EC130, a Sony SOBAX ICC-500W, a Canon 163, a Sperry Rand Remington 1259S scientific calculator, a Monroe 950, A Monroe Statistician 344, a Commodore 512, and so many more. At one point, I counted over a 100. Some work, some don't. The Sony SOBAX was a restoration I did. Also restored a couple Commodore N60s and an S61. Kept one N60, and sold the other to an Australian pilot. I know the pain about old batteries! The SCM Cogito 240SR worked in 2012, but since moving, no longer transfers the keyed entry register into the working register. You can still key numbers in, and they show up on the CRT, but you can't really _do_ anything with them, without it being able to transfer the register contents. I have some calculators that are missing parts, or even just parts only, such as a Wang 360SE main unit in unknown condition, and a gutted (so sad) display+keyboard unit, and 6 nixie display-decade ring counter board from a 1961 ANITA MK7. I so wish I could have gotten the whole machine, but the seller had already parted it and sold off parts to God only knows where. I figured, with 6 of the nixie boards, I could maybe do a rotary phone dial style neon calculator, using those 6 boards as the decade counters and displays.I have a bunch of pocket calculators as well. most of my stuff is 1960s-early 80s, with most coming from the 70s. Video of the Sperry Rand and it's un-blanked calculations. Watching it calculate a cube root is beautiful! --> QY6fMiVHO54

Something about this video doesn't add up... Must be the bad batteries.

Love the hat!!!

That was so enjoyable to watch, there must be something wrong with me.

That TI-5650 is the exact same model we used in BOE class back in high school...damn I really miss those days :)

Absolutely enjoyed this video. With every unboxing, there is a thrill of what’s inside and what condition the calculator is in. Thank you for sharing this movement.

Have you tried Oil of Wintergreen on the print roller?

Back in the very early 1970's, I owned the TI-55, TI-57, TI-58C and a TI-59. Don't get me started with those BP-1A battery packs. I also have the PC-100a cradle and a slew of 'modules'. Yep, I STILL use my '59'. And now, (November 2019), *I'm* 59!

Interesting that there were so few "Scientific" calculators. I guess Engineers and Quality Assurance Specialists had more mundane computational tasks, even back then, and even on something as advanced as the Apollo program. Probably needed to have big stacks of 17" wide tractor fed computer printouts, just as I had to turn in for my college computer classes during the 80s. (My FORTRAN class was the first at my school to transition from punch cards to teletypes).

A friend pronounces it 'cackle-ater'. That is all. I enjoy your videos Fran!

Vintage calculators are cool. I still have my dad's HP-29C which still works though I need to make a new battery pack for it. It was the first My own HP41-CX is still my go-to calculator and I have an emulator of it for my phone when I'm out of the house. I have a couple newer HP models as well. I've never been a fan of TI calculators, but I'll admit that one from 1974 is cool and I really hope it's not totally destroyed inside. That's one I'd actually like to see working again.

Nice, Casio still makes a tight calculator. The fx-115es will calculate a definite integral.

Couldn't believe my luck when I found a fully working Compucorp 320G Scientific Calculator for around the $8 mark at a local flee market. Sometime in the near future I'm about to have it serviced. Not that it need much. It's just a matter of cleaning the contacts under the keypad.

I was hoping for some vintage HP calculator because they look so cool. My oldest is an HP-42s that I still use everyday. I got it in 1991 for $173.33 Canadian. I had an HP-11c before that but I gave it away back when I was not looking far ahead. I also had a Sharp PC1211 at one point and I have no idea what happened to it, I think I sold it. My first programmable was a TI-58c that I let go when the keyboard became unusable because of bouncing issues. I kept if for a long time with the idea of replacing the keyboard with a mechanical one but I don't know what happened to it. My first calculator was a TI-30, the original with LED display. It also succumbed to the keys becoming to bouncy. I "hacked" it to become the counter of a digital voltmeter for a school electronic project, I don't know what happened to it since then. My HP-42s is over 28 years old and still work as new, none of my TI ever lasted more than a year or two. Well I got older TIs but I just put batteries in them from time to time to play with them then remove the batteries and put them away.

When mum first worked in an office in the 50s they had a Comptons “Comptometer”

Hi, yes, as I have seen vintage calculator collection, I have two HP Hewlett Packard 45 and HP 65, if you are interested?

Fran should turn all of these in a calculator art wall.

An RPN user myself, but a lot of people I worked with used TIs. Of course we could never be friends.....LOL.

Well that was fun!

Hi Fran big Clive was talking about restoring vf displays do you know any methods and if so could you demonstrate it plz

Super Fran...

First electronic pocket calculator we had cost $35 and only had six digits. LED display was tiny.

Fran, I didn't realize that Missy had passed away! So sorry. Losing a fur baby is awful.

Most liquid crystal display failures are due to the zebra strip connection shrinking or hardening with age. I wonder if there's some way of treating them to restore function?

The TI DataCard date code is the 16th week of 1979...

Fran! That Toon is Funkeh! :-) ♀ ♫ ♫♫

Nice video 😎😎

That last one says it's a two-color printer. Does it automatically print negative numbers in red or something like that?

This brings back a vague memory of a calculator joke I encountered in 7th grade. I forget how it goes, but it ends in '55378008' and it wasn't polite. I'm curious if anyone knows it.

Fran, have you ever owned or used the TI-59 calculator with the magnetic card reader/writer and the library chip? When I was in 8th grade(1987-1988), my Aunt's boyfriend gave me one that was used by his son. I used it for several years, until it finally died. I had to rig up an external battery pack to run it.

Omg i wish i had these ...

I remember when Sinclair made his first pocket calculators and sold them as kits

I remember in 1975 Texas Instruments basic calculator was high tech.

Ho Big is your Leaking Battery Box..And Do what I got Make the Roller with your 3D Printer.. Well Dad's Can now go into the Backup Stash Bin..

I have two vintage calculators ,I just need to buy the ink refills, but they work ,I want a thermal papper calculator they don't need ink .

A letter written using typewriter...

late 70s/early 80s Sanyo,TI solar powered scientific calculators ftw btw...nice DOD original letter!

It's Christmas at the Fran Lab. Love the little back-of-the-car-seat monitor for the over-the-shoulder camera.

I think that Sanyo is the first printing calculator I've seen that's not a Casio.

Fran what an amazing cache of calculators. As the ladies father was part of the Apollo programme I hope if you pass them on that all the original history goes with them. Any chance of seeing one of these retro calc being restored? Awesome vid and thanks for sharing 👍👍👍👍👍

Fran your odd in lovely way.

LGR would be jealous.

I should dig out my old TI-30... I found 3 ways to turn it on without using the ON button!

if you as good at trigonometry as I was in the past you did not need calculators normally just working it out in my head I was at worst .03 out and at best right or .001 out but I lived in the world predating calculators ~ Fran if possible you need to show and work out trigonometry using the printed tables that came in books

chicklet keyboards...ahhh...

Never seen a 9volt quite do that . Hey Fran ...Saw your post about 1958 FACOM relay based computer video here on YT. My first thought ...Divide by zero ... I used to do that to my Dad's huge desktop mechanical calculator 55 years ago. It banged, clacking up a storm, while it's top part shifted back and forth, lifted up and down, numbers rolling over and over, shaking his desk forever till infinity...There's your result ! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ldBlZ5d2scfZpac.html

Zebra strips.....(in SOME cases).

Press: 710 decimal 77345 Now turn the calculator upside down.

My calculator history started with my farmer father's mechanical 1/4 inch thick adding & subtracting device that was operated with a steel pin mounted on a round wood "pencil". At about the same time I at school had to use a book of logarithm tables. After that was the time of my slide rules. But because the slide rules son't do addition or subtraction, I at one point bought at a flea market a mechanical, crank operated Brunsviga real calculator. But then I donated it to my father, as it did not do trigonometry like my slide rules. At my work I had the opportunity of testing three different electronic desk top calculators for possible purchase to the Engineering Department. They were a Litton Monroe, a Wang and finally an HP 9100. The first two failed handling the decimal point correctly in exponent situations. The HP worked correctly, so I recommended buying that. It was in 1970 or 1971. Like usual, those holding the money purse were "slow" to approve. Time turned to 1972 and two things happened: First, HP came out with their model 35 pocket calculator in February and I ordered mine in April. But then a third thing -- I got moved into another division of the same company. That happened by an appointment letter, not due to my choice. But anyway, my boss got an excuse to claim that I had gotten so annoyed for the delayed HP 9100 purchase that I had bought my own HP calculator. I received my HP 35 when I already was at the new site in July. But I was told by the old friends that the argument had worked and they were indeed getting their HP 9100. There have been more HP calculators in my life, including magnetic card programmable model 67 which suffered deterioration of the rubber in its card feeder roller. I still have a binary (programmer's) version 16, but my longest served one has been model 15. In fact, I now have "15" emulators on my PC, my iPad, my Android phone an the latest, a MacBook Pro. Can you tell I love the model 15 in all incarnations?

dont leave batteries in your collectible Star Trek toys either. not that i would.

I have a couple questions... 1) A few months ago you wanted to stop the viewer mails because you were worried about the unidentified packages that might show up. Today you show your address on the box. Did you have a change of heart regarding unannounced packages? 2) A few weeks ago you announced that you might be moving out of your new shop because the landlord sold the building. Darn the bad luck. What is the status of that revelation? You had asked if viewers would like to join you in buying the building and you could be the tenant. Did that work out as planned? Just curious because I do enjoy watching the FranLab in action.

heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Great Calculator Collection and fun video Fran.