[John Rogers]

When I started basic US Navy nuclear power school in 1966, we had a full week of 8 hour days doing math work books, I.E. one hour of addition, then one of division, ETC and then several days of binary math, I.E. 1s and 0s. What fun and then we learned to use the slide rule. I finally bought a calculator that did basic math functions but no memory, ETC. I think it was $100 or so.

In 1978 I had some sort of Texas Instruments functional calculator and it was the only one in engineering it seems and we used it to figure how fast to tow a little single screw FFG that had caught fire and lost propulsion power. Towed it from the coast of Iran during the hostage crisis to Diego Garcia so the tender could repair it. In the middle of a US Navy towing hawser (big rope) there is a little rolled up paper with data you need to tow a ship so you cut off a foot or so.