HP10

I was watching a program about Voyager space craft that launched in 1976 and the very small on board computer and I was reminded of the HP 10C hand held calculator I bought in 1982. I was doing financial work at the time and needed to take a salary of $20,000 per years and increase it by 3% each year for 30 years. At the same time I needed to take 5% of each years salary and invest it earning 4% and then find out how much I saved over the 30 years. I would do this year by year for the 30 years by hand. I was working one evening in the office and the young man who cleaned the place was watching me and told me of an easier way. It turns out he was an engineering student at UND and told me I had a programmable calculator and he could fix it to help me which he proceeded to do. After that I only needed to put in the first year and then hit a repeat button and the second year would pop up and then again for the third and so on. This turned a two hour job into a ten minute job and is a very simple example of how computers were able to revolutionize business. I still have the HP 10 but it is of little use since all new calculators can do this.