Thursday, June 27, 2024

The deeply dorky thrill of my first calculator



As a tall, geeky white guy, I've often been mistaken for somebody who works in IT, or at least knows how it all functions. And I really, really don't - I did a computing course in 1994 and did a couple of years working with networks in the mid-90s, but it wasn't for me, and I drifted away from an undoubtedly lucrative career in technology.

Even today, working in digital media, people ask me how things work, and I honestly don't know. My crap analogy is that running a news website is like driving a car - I know how to drive a car, but I still need a mechanic to tell me how things actually work.

And when it comes to updating with the latest tech, I'm still decades behind the times. I play games that are at least 10 years old, and it takes me years to get the new phone or device. I can wait. To be honest, the only time I ever got excited about technology was when I got my first calculator.

I can still remember that it was a weekend when my Mum and sisters were away, and it was just me and my dad, and for some reason, he had a new digital calculator to give me

It wasn't one of the fancy small ones that could fit on a wrist, or the incredible ones that had a basic boxing game built in, it was just your standard 1984 calculator. 

And I thought it was amazing. Learning addition and multiplication was a big day for a schoolkid, and this was a magic way of checking my sums. You could also turn it upside down and write words like 'BOOBS'.

Technology has come a long, long way since that first calculator blew my mind, and while it's all been very impressive, nothing was as thrilling as that calculator and its easy maths. I must have been easy to please as a kid, because sometimes all it took was a simple calculation.

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