Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

Hi, this could have been a Monroe machine. Here is a link to the 1655 (although I think the card reader was actually optical, it was punch-out chad based though) http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/a-monroe1655.html I used one of these in High school (1969-71) and I managed to snag one on eBay a few years ago with the card reader, manual, etc. The fun thing was that the nixie displays were direct outputs from the registers that did the calculating, so they would be flickering away whenever you did some calculations until it finally displayed the result. I am not sure if Monroe had other models at the time. best regards, Steve Thatcher Well I can think of one programmable calculator that I used in the early 1970s that did multiplication/division etc using logarithms. ISTR that it used nixie tubes for output and that this thing cost heaps of money (like $10K in the days when the Aussie dollar was worth more than the US one!). Programming was achieved using a single punched card with pre-punched chads removed using some fancy tool (in my case a paper clip). The card was read by placing it in the card reader (duh!) which had lots of pins and contacts, where the holes were lead to completing a circuit so you basically had a card programmed ROM. I keep wanting to write that this calculator was a Wang, but I'm not really sure (it's been a while). I'm wondering whether the Physics Department still has it - I should ask.