Cool teardown video of electronics from 1963!

[IanB]

I haven't seen anyone post a link to this yet, so I will link to it here. It's a fascinating piece of industrial archaeology and the enthusiasm of the presenter is infectious!

https://youtu.be/2BIx2x-Q2fE

[HighVoltage]

I had not seen that calculator before and was not aware of the acoustic memory storage.
How interesting!

[Cyberdragon]

Someone always beats you to it on this forum, if they haven't, it's probably not interesting enough.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/first-all-electronic-calculator-from-1963/

[CNe7532294]

Dr. Stoll is a great mentor. I like his style. It speaks to me very much so. I liked it when he used the "measurement ruler test" and gave a valuable life lesson. I liked his explaination here as to precisely why I collect equipment. Exactly as I had stated to someone in curiousmarc's vid of repairing a power supply from hell. Still, a current RF engineer friend brushed off one of the units I was repairing as a "trash design".  Please be patient with said engineer hes young and new but quite passionate about EE. I know because I always get a wall of text whenever we chat about electronics on steam. Besides he did say that the trash design must have been good for the 80s. I'm sure he'll come around.  I should probably show him what something in the 40s looks like. Should be fun. 

[Kleinstein]

Acoustic memory was used before in some of the very early computers (around 1950) - however a in non RoHs way with mercury filaments.

Long time ago (around 40 years) I took apart an calculator of similar age - also using germanium transistors, but no scope tube but nixies or similar. Only a 4 banger - so no square root, more like 6 digits and no acoustic memory and maybe half the size.

[duak]

Got one of those calculators in 1977 for a reason I can't remember now, maybe to use the CRT for somethng.  It still worked and was neat to play with but pocket calculators were already cheaper and far more useful.  It got a second life, after I sold it to a classmate who gutted it and used the case and power supply to house one of the original Apple II boards.  He got his board in summer when Apple still sold them separately, and was probably from one of the first few production batches.  I suppose both items are sort of collectors items now, but probably aren't even worth their original value.

Cheers,