Great post! I was at school when there were no handheld electronic calculators. We actually did use logarithmic tables! We also used slide rules ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule ). I remember my father getting his company technicians to repair my slide rule's cursor when I broke it. I also personally had one of these: http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/Calc-Chadwick.htm . I'd completely forgotten that until I read this article!