Down Memory Lane - First Encounter with Technology

My first memorable experience with digital technology in education setting, as far as I can remember, has to be the programmable scientific calculator. The year was 1975 when I was in Grade 10. (Yes, you may pause to figure out my age.) Basic function calculator that could only do simple arithmetic was pretty common back then. It had been around for a few years then and, in fact, I was quite unimpressed when my father first brought home one of these calculators. It was huge and heavy and all I could do with the calculator was add, subtract, multiply and divide. I don’t think it even had a memory function. I could do anything and everything that basic calculator could do .. although perhaps slower and I would make more mistakes. But in terms of functionality, I did not perceive the calculator as an extension to what I could do and that it could benefit me much.

But when one of my friends in Grade 10 showed me his TI SR-52 calculator (see http://www.thocp.net/hardware/ti_calculators.htm), I knew I had to get one. I was totally fascinated by the many colored keys and funny symbols, as well as the myriads of functions built into the calculator. I suddenly realized that here was a machine that was more intelligent than me. I had the idea that if I could own one of these little machines, I would be so much more intelligent. So after calling a number of stores in the lower mainland, I finally tracked down the last calculator available at the Bay and immediately went and bought it.

I then spent many hours pouring through the manual and experimenting on the calculator, and learning the different features of the calculator. I learned mathematics which I had not been taught in school before such as statistical functions, polar / rectangular coordinates, radian / degree conversions, etc. I was also fascinated by the RND key – it generated random numbers. I could not really understand why I was so fascinated by this function until recently, and that is I had always thought of the calculator as a deterministic machine and there was supposed to be a one to one correspondence between input and output. There was supposed to be no randomness in mathematical functions. The fact that this calculator seemed to violate this deterministic behavior caused me to think that this machine might have more power than I realized. (I said “seemed to” because I know now that there is really no such thing as random numbers. Random numbers are really generated by a function that generates numbers that “look” random.)

The TI SR-52, however, was more than just a scientific calculator, it was also programmable. This was my first exposure to programming. Once again, I was fascinated that by punching in a sequence of instructions, I could get the calculator to perform a series of complex calculations at the touch of one or two keys. Then as I explored further, the calculator turned out to be an amazing game machine. I started with some simple games, like high-low game, memory game, and then I learned how to program the calculator to play more sophisticated games like Blackjack, Mastermind, Lunar Lander, etc. The amazing thing was that all these games were played using one line of digital display. Others who watched me as I played these games must have wondered what I saw in those numbers. The programmability feature allowed the calculator to be transformed from one with a finite number of built in functions to one that could compute almost anything, limited only by the amount of memory inside. Again the sense of power in knowing what the calculator was capable of doing and how to program it was extremely exciting and satisfying for me then. It was an interplay between discovering the inherent power of the calculator with all the built-in functions and enhancing the calculator capability to give it additional functions that have captured my interest since then, and even now. Last year, I purchased what I believed to be the most advanced scientific programmable calculator on the market nowadays, the HP – 50G. The screen is a lot bigger now, and one can play Lunar Lander and Blackjack with much better graphics, and it boasts 2300+ built-in functions! One can hardly stop learning, discovering, and exploring with one of these marvels!