I have owned five calculators - not all have made it to appear in the family portrait:
The old ones
There was a calculator I occasionally messed around with which I don't have anymore. It was a large, almost square office calculator, exclusively placed on its back on a desk and its most complex function was square rooting. Admittedly you don't need calculus when doing simple arithmetic, so it was great at its job via the minimalism. I suspect they're falling out of use, though, what with Excel being easier to use and phones coming with their own calculator anyways.
Calculator 1
It's not my first calculator, really, but it is the most primitive. It also stands out the most with its sky blue casing, and, in fairness, it's not a bad colour at all. Unfortunately, I'd never be able to get used to it. It has a seven segment display for the answers, which is archaic in comparison to the others, and there's only one row of bits to type a function in. Thus you end up using caret* notation (so e^x, not ex) and the fractions look untidy as well. Bonus points for including functions like standard deviation and summation as shift buttons, even if I have no clue how they would be used. It's not entirely straightforward to use unless you're experienced with it, but it has charm nonetheless.
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| Untidy fraction notation |
Calculators 2 and 3
These are almost identical, albeit the first one was originally my sister's and I therefore used it as a spare. They only differ by a single solar panel.
I'm more used to this calculator type as I used it throughout my GCSE exams; Calculator 3 is starting to suffer slightly from pixel rot and a fading screen, but otherwise still functions quite well. It's also more straightforward to get your head around, and uses much nicer fraction notation. There are also different modes which are quite useful, albeit the TRUE/FALSE option didn't really prove of any value to me. They even introduce letters A through F, with X and Y, which makes calculations much easier as you don't rely on the answer function so much. Apart from this, it's admittedly a rounder, greyer cousin of Calculator 1, though still much better functionally.
Calculator 4
This is the calculator from the elegy I posted a week ago. It is now lost, and I'll likely never find it again. However, it was an improvement over 2 and 3 in a few ways. Firstly, it had buttons for differentiation and integration, as well summation (this time better implemented). It also had a greater range of statistical functions, and complex numbers, matrices and vectors had their own modes. You had an entire inventory of scientific constants, and it was easier to find roots of functions, and you could solve equations now. My only issues with it were that the hyperbolic functions were no longer given their own button and there wasn't a recursion button. Either way, it had so many benefits which were hard to overlook at the end of the day.
Calculator 5
This is the large one at the end of the photo. It's also the most advanced, though naturally with some setbacks. Previously, the calculators had four buttons on their top row - 5 has six buttons at the top. Shift is delegated to an uncomfortable location, and on and off are the same button (which is more natural in my opinion) as a consequence. The whole alphabet is now included, and the equals button is the execute (EXE) button. Most disturbingly, there is now no button for the number e (though ex remains).
Those drawbacks cannot be compared with the new additions, though. Coding is available, and you can sketch graphs both 2D and 3D. It is a graphing calculator, after all. Whilst I doubt I will have to use most of the modes available for my A Levels, the expanded range won't hurt. The periodic table is even present, and you can design games and programs for the calculator. Admittedly this comes with the cost of a shorter battery life, but the experience will probably be worth the charging. Calculators have certainly come far.
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