


The Calculator Museum is divided into several sections generally by manufacturer. Not having a calculator for math through grade 12 made me good at doing hand calculations, and gave me a great appreciation for calculators. I bought a Commodore scientific calculator while a freshman or sophomore at UC San Diego for $50 (see Vintage Technology Museum for an example) and a beautiful Sharp LCD scientific calculator (below) a year or two later for about $40 when the Commodore broke. My dad got the family a Sharp ELSI 8107 with basic operations when I was a senior in high school. I envied my friend's TI SR-50 scientific calculator which cost about $150 (about $800 in 2021 dollars).

While I was in high school (1971-1975) the first pocket calculators came out. It did the difficult math we were doing almost instantaneously. I remember a man coming to my eighth grade math class in 1970 or 1971 and showing us a desktop electronic calculator costing hundreds of dollars. It contains over 140 calculators, starting with mechanical machines dating back to at least the 1920s to electronic pocket calculators beginning in 1970.
