Hello, calculator fanciers! A bit of an unusual one today.
I have been sent this in by an amateur calculator appreciator.
Robert in the United States of America found this in his parents' basement!
They you are, Robert. I bet you didn't think when you pulled this out and dusted it off
that one day you'd see it here! I mean, this is center court, the epicenter of the calculator appreciating world. It just goes to show you
everyone at home, with your little calculator collections, that one day, all your calculator dreams can come true.
Okay, so here we have the Casio with an unexpected 'extra'
that's slightly more threatening than I like my calculators to be. But you can see, it has got two color printing,
which is two more colors than most.
Now, just very quickly, I'm aware this is officially a historic
calculator, because it's quite an old one that's been sent in. And some of you will be concerned that while it is
still in its original box,
it's not mint in its original box. It's been damaged here, like some kind of heavy blow to the top.
There's some scuffing around the bottom. It is not museum quality.
There's some marks on here. Very disappointing. And from a proper collecting point of view, we don't know the history of this calculator.
It's got no provenance. I mean there's no chain that shows where this came from. So I'm well aware
this is not up to the standards you'd expect. But, for a bit of fun,
I'm prepared to pop it open and have a closer look.
And here we go. This should slide out. And oh, okay. So here we have
some paper for printing. That's gonna be handy.
Here we've got some of these, with a
yellowing tape on them to hold. Maybe it was yellow to start with. Now, for the UK collector
it's a little inconvenient that the US adapters are 120 volts,
or freedom voltage, as it's commonly referred to.
But as a purist, I'm not gonna swap that out for a replacement one.
I want to keep the proper one. The official standard practice is to get an adapter to adapt the adapter to your local situation.
So you need to get an adapter adapter, or adapter squared, as we call it. Little joke there from the calculator community.
Okay, getting down to the calculator itself. We have, here we go, look at that!
So it's got a kind of dust cover there. So if it's in a place with lots of debris that might land on it,
you can keep it carefully cased under there, at a moment's notice.
It's got the full instructions! Look at that! And warranty.
Now the HR 100 is well known for having the largest broadsheet instruction manual in the business. Look at that!
So the box has got quite a nice look to it. Now, as previously discussed, we can't use the US adapter
straightaway, and so we're going to have to put some batteries in the back of this bad boy. Okay, so it takes four
double A batteries.
Batteries, please! Four double A's. Thank you very much. Now, we'll pop one in there.
It's always very important to put your batteries in facing the right way around.
Otherwise, you will, your calculator can catch on fire, it can explode.
Or even worse, you might get the wrong answer to one of your calculations.
I'm afraid I'm gonna have to give you a gore warning.
Look away if you don't like horrific medical sights,
because I've actually cut my finger opening up this cal-. You can see, look- look at that!
It's barely attached anymore. I've cut my digit while trying to get in to use some more digits.
I mean that, that's just the risks I accept when you're opening calculators at this kind of level.
Okay, we just pop that back on there, and now the batteries are in, we will fire this thing up to on!
All right, so this is just basic calculator mode. So let's do, we'll do the standard divide by zero.
One divide by zero equals...
tiny tiny error over there. Doesn't make a big deal of it. That's quite nice. And, we'll do a quick division
precision... does that clear?
One, oh, it's locked. Clear.
Oh, okay. We're clear, here we go, okay. Let's do one divided by nine, equals.
All ones, times nine, equals.
So you can see there, not entirely accurate, which is quite good
if you're trying to fudge the books to have a little bit of wiggle room in your calculations.
And finally you got 'feed' over here. So, obviously, when you're doing your accounts,
you'll be working around the clock. If you do have to go and get some sustenance, you can just hit 'feed'.
Oh!
Oh my goodness!
Oh, so no, feed is for the printer! And you know what? That is why we're here.
We want to see the printing in action. Let's load up the paper. Just tidy up the edge
there
Okay, so the paper goes, obviously, on the back here, so we'll shove it in there, and then hit 'feed'.
Come on. Take it. Here we go!
Okay, now we're ready to do some calculations while it prints. So if I do one, plus,
I've committed the one to the paper now. No going back.
Two, plus, four, plus,
eight, plus, sixteen,
you can see, as I'm adding these numbers on, they're all being printed up there. We're up to 62, plus
124,
plus 248,
and now if we want to get the grand total, you hit star.
And there it's printed at the bottom. And if we feed that up, you can see, there's my whole calculation,
and then, you know what? You can you can then cut that off there.
If you want to do a calculation
and send it to someone else, incredibly convenient, a little souvenir, send it off, everyone else can enjoy it.
Okay, so let's do some tests while we're printing!
One, divided by, zero, equals.
Oh, there, see, it's done a full line. You can see that it's not happy.
It's done, no, no, no no no. Clear that. If I do one, divided by,
super zero, so double zero, and it goes, and, still no. Very very unhappy with that.
Let's clear that out. Okay, let's try
seeing how it does with undoing division.
So, one, divided by, nine, equals, and so there we've got,
very, loads of ones, very good. Now, we'll multiply that
by nine, equals.
No, not quite. That's very disappointing.
What is this?
All right, so very knowingly, it tries to do it,
and it didn't get back to one. So, then this is now a little monument to its shame.
You can keep that. Right, you can, you can be like,
"Look what you've done! That is very disappointing. I'm very upset with you."
Very rarely can you show a calculator what it's done incorrectly like that.
Now one of the great things about a printing calculator, if you're doing a calculation, like you put in fifty eight
thousand, and you add, eight, right,
and then you want to get the grand total for that,
once it's printed out, you can feed it all the way through. And normally you've got to pick the calculator up and move it around.
Because it's a printing calculator, nothing has to go anywhere, and you can still turn the answer around.
So very quickly, we'll just check how big the display is. We've got one two three four five six seven eight,
nine digits!
ten, eleven, twelve,
no thirteen.
It hits an error at thirteen, but it does display big twelve digits,
that's quite nice.
And if you want, if you want, you want to keep as a reminder
of just how many digits you've got, of course you can print that out, and there you are.
In fact, on there are more than twelve things on the display, because you've got all the nice fancy
curly commas. Look at those! Good typography. You've got an overly sized decimal point, there's a space, and a plus.
I mean that, that is a good display.
So there you are. The Casio unexpected extra twelve digits, two color printing, big display, printing calculator.
Model number HR dash 100 TE plus negative W, adapter included.
Now, obviously, I'm just doing this is a bit of an exhibition piece. It's a bit of fun for the fans at home.
I can't give it a proper score. So there you are, Robert.
Thank you very much for sending this in. And thank you for being an inspiration
to everyone else getting into the calculator game. Who would have thought that a calculator you found in the
basement in the United States that would one day end up here at the South Surrey and Associated Regions
Calculator Appreciation Society for Professionals and Amateurs?