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I have an HP-35 (previous owner bought it new) mentioned in the article as "the death knell for the slide rule". The rechargeable batteries are long since gone and one of these days I'll get motived and try to replace them. It has very satisfying buttons, kind of like how old IBM PC keyboards feel.

It came with a metal case with lock and key. You would bolt the case to your desk and lock it. At $395 in 1972, I can understand why.

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Calculators were considered too expensive to be required or allowed on exams since only few college students could afford them at the time.

So it was still slide rules only for me until about 1974 when the entry level TI's dropped below $100 and became permitted.

Slide rule use dropped like a rock.

When I started, students calculating during exams were doing the same mathematical tasks using the same physical tools they had been doing in those halls since the 1920's, a few years later they started doing about the same things they have been doing electronically ever since.

I wonder if anything else will come along after calculators, it seems like we've reached peak performance for that use case since there's sort of a cap to how much your tool can even be allowed to help given it's used during a test of your knowledge, not the tool's.

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