SHARP EL-508A
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I have bought this calculator. It's not new. I thought that it is from
early 1980 but it seems to be from 1975 [1]! I gave got it because of
my current nostalgic mood.
When I was a pupil I had this calculator. Actually I used it through
all my school years (at a basic school, at a hight school and ad the
university). It definitively broke when I was already a Ph.D. There
were several liquid crystals leakage (yes, if has a LCD) and some keys
were worn off. I still have it somewhere. If I'm not mistaken the
keyboard was produced on 1982 and I used it from about 1984.
Now I have got an another one. It is almost intact. It is probably
newer than my old one and was probably used only few times (there are
no scratches and no dirt). There were two SHARP-branded batteries
inserted. If I understand their labels the batteries were produced in
1986. Most probably these batteries are the original ones which were
sold as set with the device. SO I can assume that the calculator is
from about 1986, too. The serial number is 3V148088 but I have no idea
how to read it.
I remember that the factorial function (n!) was slow here. Well, the
"69!" takes more than 5 seconds. That's not that bad (the goniometric
functions are almost instant).
Most probably I will not use it too often - I also have a solar energy
based SHARP will identical functionality. It is also a bit smaller and
I have a pouch for it. So it's a much better solution for situations
when I want to use a small, simple scientific calculator.
But I'm feeling very nostalgic when I'm playing with this one...
References:
[1]
https://www.calculator.org/calculators/Sharp_EL-508A.html
