Soviet Calculator History (1998)
xnumber.com
xnumber.com
I guess for the rest of my life I will remember amount of digits in PI that fit screen of my MK-52: "3.1415926"
There was another topic about pi digits on front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40943437, that remind me of it
Cheers!
I've always seen calculators render pi as "3.1415927" on 8-digit displays, and "3.141592654" on 10-digit displays.
I don't recall playing math games to determine whether the internal representations were higher precision than rendered. Alas, wasted youth.
Fun side-note: As someone who learned programming in parallel with learning English, my brain still thinks of many programming constructs as keywords that have no real meaning. 20+ years later it still surprises me sometimes when something clicks and my mind goes “Oh wait that concept is named after a real world analogy!! Whoa”
When you see something else like Python's list comprehensions or Common Lisp Loop-macroes, you become confused and very angry.
The "Eggog" message was likely copied too, although I can't think of a good way to display an error in Cyrillic in 7 segments.
Home computers is another story, in particular the 1801 series which was a domestic PDP-11 compatible design underpinning most of the Soviet personal computing boom of the late 1980s. (it was slow though, holy hell)
They're quite interesting and quirky machines, definitely HP-inspired but unique in a lot of ways. Especially the MK52 with the built in EEPROM (though other than the EEPROM and connector for an external ROM it is functionally identical to the MK61). They're also still readily available and cheap on eBay if you want to play with one.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12632803
It seems odd there isn't more first-hand/primary-source-ish information about these - people who worked on ICBMs or nerve agents or whatnot have written about their experiences, you'd think calculator designers would pop up as well. Like, where is something like this for Soviet calculators https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39962737
Of course. /s
But some of them were better.
Hell, the whole -= += ×÷ nonsense was something Sharp introduced in 1970.
edit: interestingly enough, the Sharp QT-8 also had the funky 8-segment display.
"*опа" should fit. Even non-experts can understand. But.. yes, requires creative thinking.
I would guess it's very close to the first thing that pops into the head of many a Russian speaker. А? Что? - Ничего. Желтые ботинки! Not to mention the frequent use in the classical literature, for the more high-minded. https://vk.com/topic-16292643_23535328
One can conclude that while technology comes and goes at an ever-increasing rate, Жопа is here to stay.
PS: "Жопа" in russian is "bums" or "ass" but means "shit happens".
Most of calculator models cost like 30%-50% of monthly salary of engineer who developed such devices. Scientific ones were up to 100%. It was quite far from accessible.
That and usually manufactured in such low qualities that most people couldn’t even buy one even if they could afford it.
A lot like cars which were relatively even more (extremely) expensive but you still had to wait in a queue for 2-10 years to get one.
Then there was a post-soviet wired phone design with Z80 in it which had a built-in calculator among other apps, which it had half dozen. Alarm clock, phone book, etc, etc. The killer feature was Caller ID variant - it could read caller's number from the PSTN and display that one. A feat that required accepting the call and then emulating the beeps.
Also, as someone with knowledge of how the Soviet electronics industry worked (my father was employed there), I know all too well that the most advanced models of these calculators were copies of HP or TI calculators, using unauthorised copies of TI and other American chips. Basically stolen IP, as the USSR often did.
Hopefully she will one day give up this habit, but I guess habits die hard when you’re in your 90s
The red ones go faster after all (waaagh).