I am the Operator of My Pocket Calculator
I have a dim memory of being brought to my dad’s office when I was a toddler and being shown what was then a rare marvel of modern electronic wizardy, one of the first desktop calculators. I could barely grasp what the device was for at that tender age, but with its buttons and glowing numbers, I could clearly tell it was cool. Although it was obviously an expensive piece of equipment, I was given careful instructions: Don’t touch.
Before there was a personal computer revolution, there was a pocket calculator revolution. Growing up in the 70s, prices dropped and features were added, andby the time I was in high school, there was an active sense of geeky one-upmanship over whose calculator had more functions, as well as the calculator version of the Mac/PC holy war, which of course Hewlett-Packard vs. Texas Instruments (HP-35 was my first scientific calculator).
With the ubiquity of computers, you don’t see quite as many pocket calculators around, but every now and then there is a time when need a quick calculation. Here’s a couple of websites to bookmark with some of the handier online calculators around.
The first one you probably already use all the time. Google’s search will automatically do a calculation for you. It handles anything from straight computation, say 25.5*(34.6/241)/pi, which comes up as 1.16533117, to unit conversions, like 25 liters in pints (answer: 52.8344102), or currency conversions like 654 US Dollars in Russian money (17353.0398 Russian Rubles). If you have a calculation or conversion, try Google, you’ve got about 95% chance of getting it right, even if it is something silly like changing 65 miles per hour into furlongs per fortnight (174,720). If you have trouble making it work, Google has some tips here.
If Google doesn’t have it, then Calculator.com probably does. Some nice ones to look at are the loan calculators and graphing calculator. They also have links off of their site to other specialty calculators, like photography calculators, health and fitness, sports, and engineering tools. Be warned, however, they will make you look at a fair number of ads before you get to the tool.
One calculation I always screw up in my head is figuring out time zones. I regularly deal with people all over the the world, and it is so easy to add hours the wrong way, forget about Daylight Savings time, or mess up the International Date Line. I have used Time and date.com a lot, and it has an extensive list of tools and calculators, including a nifty world clock that you customize with half a dozen cities that you can bookmark. I just recently found Timezonecheck.com, though, which gives a quick-n-easy answer to the question what time is it right now anywhere in the world.
Finally, let’s not forget our history. The SR-71 Blackbird and Saturn V rockets were designed by men using these. And the Chinese built one of the worlds oldest civilizations using these.
Permalink | Trackback | del.icio.us Digg Reddit
Leave a comment
