Calculators Built on Microchips Doomed Slide Rules
In 1972 microprocessors hit the market as the key components of the first handheld electronic calculator. The nameplate read simply "Hewlett Packard" and the device could perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions.
It sold for $395, which in those days represented several weeks pay for a young engineer. But it was a huge success and within three years the K & E Company, manufacturer of slide rules and perhaps the biggest direct competitor, shipped the last of its mathematical magic wands. Slide rules had been the gold standard of manual calculators for 400 years, but they were blown out of the water by a battery-powered chunk of plastic with an electronic chip at its heart.