Memories (not RAM)
I was rather envious of a friend at school who got a Sinclair Cambridge calculator. I seem to recall him demonstrating that 664751 multiplied by 8 spells BOOBIES when you hold the device upside down - but I'm unsure of my memory (no pun) as the wikipedia article seems to suggest the thing had a 5 digit plus 3 digit exponent display. Whatever, boobies are very important to a growing lad. And no, I was not a twitcher bird watcher birder ornithologist.
Later on I was given a Sinclair Scientific calculator. It was almost a lightbulb moment when I got my head around the Reverse Polish Notation. I'm pretty sure that was when I changed from near-last in Maths to near-first (school maths, I hasten to add).
Later on my envy was re-ignited when he got a Sinclair Black Watch. If my memory does not betray me it was shortly after that that Douglas Adams wrote about '...an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea'.
RIP Sir Clive.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
