Your birth year
2006
Pocket Calculator
19721970s
Pocket Calculator is 34 years older than you
It's from 1972, before you were born.
- Pioneers
- Texas Instruments, Sharp, Busicom
- Type
- Handheld electronic calculator
- Debuted
- 1972
- Note
- Killed the slide rule
As an Amazon Associate, OlderThan earns from qualifying purchases.
About
As of 2026, it's 54 years old.
When the pocket calculator went truly portable and affordable around 1972, the mighty slide rule — backbone of engineering for centuries — was quietly escorted to the museum. No hard feelings, slide rule.
Early models like the HP-35 and TI's pocket units cost a paycheck and could basically only do arithmetic, but they did it instantly and silently, which felt like sorcery to anyone raised on long division.
Cheap, fast, and ruthlessly logical, the pocket calculator democratized math and gave generations of students one truly important discovery: 5318008, flipped upside down.
