Cleaning up

I still have my original 21CX bought back in 1984 a stone's through from the HP facility where it was made.  A 41 was required for ALL first term engineering students at Oregon State University.  I rarely use it, I prefer my HP50, but it comforts me just knowing it still works.

Used mine 25 years ago to take the exam. Still have it and will have to pull it out and see if still works.

Just realized that I had it for 41 years.  Spooky.

I went with a TI-59 in college. My mistake. Acquired a used HP41cx about 1990, but never got the survey module. Used a hand entered program written by a colleague.

Got an HP48gx and an SMI card in 1993. That's the one I really remember. Picked up a second, and a second SMI card, a few years later because the first card couldn't carry enough digits to use state plane. This was going strong until I dropped it down the stairs several years ago. Calculator still works fine, card does not.  The TI-59 has long since gone to its demise, the HP41cx and the HP-48gx's are around but I can't remember where.   

Nowadays I use an unprogrammed HP35s as my daily driver and a combination of StarNet, C3d, and Excel to do any necessary calcs. I last used the HP48 to do the Oklahoma test in 2011. 

When I worked for DOT we took classes in the winter when things were slow. In one of the classes, the professor was also a surveyor.

So, after the class I went to meet him and said, "I'll bet you have an HP calculator." He smiled and responded, "I have two." 

What a bunch of youngsters we have here.  Slide rules were the number one tool when I started college in 1971.  Four years later, the world had changed dramatically.

Same here. Started college in 1961. My dad gifted me his 13" sliderule with a hard leather case with a belt loop. It was like carrying a Bowie knife and used it on into the Forest Service until the head engineer brought in a Curta and that was a big improvement for accuracy. Then it was the Curta and a TrigFan until the HP45 came out.

@holy-cow I just want to thank you for calling me young.  Although I still wonder who that good looking 25-year-old is when I shave.

This thread reminds me of the never ending need to update from what we considered normal to something different, which later changes to something differnt, which later changes to something different, which later......................................you get the idea.  It all has been a pain in the ass everytime the status quo changes.

As a pre-school tot living on a farm in an old house biult in the late Nineteenth Century on a crushed limestone county road with water coming from a hand pump well and an outhouse beyond the chicken house which required passing the wood pile and being expected to haul some back to the house on every trip during the winter and hand-milking a few cows twice per day and helping Mom wash clothes with the Maytag wringer washer but no dryer and listening to the radio as we had no TV set, besides there were only two stations and using a 1955 Chevy car alot like a second pickup with no comprehension of what that car would be worth today, and big sister going to a two-room grade school a half mile from our house.  ZIP Codes did not exist.  Dial telephones hadn't come to our neighborhood yet, let alone direct dialing for long distance, which included people as close as two and a half miles from our house. The vast majority of our neighbors were self-employed entreprenuers whether they knew it or not.  Thus no regular checks subject to a dozen differnet forms of withholding, just send Uncle Sam some money once a year.  What would someday be called a landfill was that little pocket of waste area down in the trees somewhere subject to searching for reusable stuff in a pinch, such as a car hood for a sled.  Grandma's trip to visit our cousins was on a Greyhound bus with a string of 49 tickets, one for each stop along the way.  My parents had hooked onto the REA power lines only four years prior to my birth.  Meahwhile, my nearby grandparents held out until 1959 before running electricity into their house.  Prior to widespread use of diesel-powered locomotives the trains on the track a quarter mile distant would stop, disconnect the back half of the cars, pull the front half onto a side track, go back to get the second half to hook back together to make a full train again because the grade was too steep to pull them all at once.  I learned to count to more than 100 as a youngster by counting those slow moving cars.  Hobos were still a common sight.

I grew up in that world, HC. Railroad was a few miles away, though. We got electricity in 1962.  Before that, one white gas lamp anf one kerosene. Battery radio for a while.

TV later, but my grandparents did have it so I saw Sky KIng, Sea Hunt. Captain Kangaroo, Circud Boy, Fury, etc..  My dad never had plumbing his whole life, and I certainly recall winter in the outhouse. Summer, too, watching out for spiders and wasps.

A different world, but a less fragile one, when you look at all the things we rely on now.

.

I alsi have hand-picked corn beside a wagon pulled by horses. They needed no driver, but just knew to keep pace eith you.

While I've lived through a lot of change, I also reflect on my grandmother who was born before automobiles and airplanes, was married before she heard a radio, and almost lived to the 21st century. My mother learned to drive in a model A Ford and was using Google in her last years.

Change happens.

During my first week on campus at Southern Tech, I visited the bookstore, where I was introduced to the HP-41. Up to then, I had only used the TI-58 and TI-59. I knew I had to have it for the alpha/ numeric display. Writing programs for it is how I learned all my surveying/math formulas.

I still have one back there in the drawer today, along with its card reader and a couple of PACS.

Posted by: @d-k-kilby

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During my first week on campus at Southern Tech, I visited the bookstore, where I was introduced to the HP-41. Up to then, I had only used the TI-58 and TI-59. I knew I had to have it for the alpha/ numeric display. Writing programs for it is how I learned all my surveying/math formulas.

I still have one back there in the drawer today, along with its card reader and a couple of PACS.

Keith, you were a few years behind me at Southern Tech.  Like Holy Cow, I started with a slide rule.  Even though the HP35's were out, weren't allowed to use calculators in class or on exams.  I bought my first HP (21?) to take the LSIT exam, the Board had ruled that calculators that "retained" a program after being turned off were not allowed.  I do appreciate all the progress, but sometimes I miss the thought and logic that went into the process without just numbers.

Andy

I mastered the art of making a slide rule more useful than a simple TI calculator that cost over $150 at the time that did nothing but add, subtract, multiply and divide and maybe store one number.  With good vision and a sharp, hard piece of lead, I could write the critical formulae required for the subject matter being tested somewhere on the plastic slide rule.  Some of my engineering classes might require memorizing a dozen formulae with six or eight variables and a constant or two.  Two weeks later you were done with those specific formulae and in need of knowing a dozen new ones.  Saved my tail on many a test with my magic cheat sheet that could be erased by hand in three seconds.  Thermodynamics and soil mechanics were major memorization classes for entry level classes.  The graduate class in Heat Transfer was a killer for memorization of formulae.

Holy Cow, thankfully I didn't have many courses that required us to memorize formulae.  We could look up the formula, we just had to know which formula, what numbers and where in the formula to plug them in.  When I took the EIT exam, I carried in a briefcase with text books and notebooks full of formulae.  At the next table was a fellow with a handtruck full of boxes of books.  I hardly had time to look up the formula, much less look through boxes looking for the appropriate book.  Of course I WAS 10 years out of school before I took the EIT also.

Andy

I still have my HP 32s II. My HP48gx SMI card. My HP 42 cv was lost during a deployment somehow. My daily now is the hp35s II only because it was allowed for the exams so I got use to it somewhat. 

My hp32s II I still have my note card with my cheat sheet for formulas like quadratic equation and a few others I always had a tough time memorizing back in school days.  My first Elementary Survey course we were allowed no notes. So solving horizontal and vertical curves. Inverses. Reducing the slope distance using vertical and zenith angles to horizontal along with the DMD method and percentage grade comps. Hi lo stations we had to memorize back then. I remember the old surveyor would walk around and clear all our calculators to make sure we had no help. No programs. I use to get so mad as I used the formulas as a check on the job from the field book and the tables for some cos tan. Interpolation to make sure I didn’t fat finger something in my early crew chief days. Now the data collector and so does it all for us. 

@andy-bruner    I took the  EIT at the first opportunity as I was confident I would not be using 90 percent of what those textbooks held on any kind of regular basis.  The proctors had warned us about the low pass rate for those who delayed taking it.  All I know is that I passed on that first attempt but have no idea of by how much.  Then I went to work for the American Society of Agricultural Engineers at their headquarters in St. Joseph, Michigan for the first several years.  Among my duties was proofreading everything that we pubished, from soil and water engineering topics to all sorts of agricultural machines, buildings and power systerm topics to food engineering topics.  My technical knowledge was very helpful but I wasn't doing anything of my own.  I organized technical conferences and continuing education resources on everything from Agriculture in Tropical and Subtropical Climates to Grain and Forage Harvesting to a short course on Product Liability and international conferences of Livestock Wast Management and Livestock Environment Systems.  Almost any topic of work related to Agricultural Engineering.  I also worked with national and international committees working with developing and revising standards across the industry and working with colleagues at other professional and engineering societies.  But, again, I was not focused on any one area.  Land surveying came later as I focused on quality of life for my family and actually being home instead of on the road.  It was a source of income that could be substantial in small town USA.

To take the P.E. esam required a minimum of four years of experience after the degree achievement and passing the EIT so I waited five years to apply.  Somehow, I managed to pass that exam on the first try, as well.  In those days you could take the General P.E. exam or one focused on specific areas sycg as Agricultural, Civil Chemical, Industrial, Electrical, Mechanical, Nuclear, Structural, etc.  I went with the General exam and worked multiple problems from several df the various specialties.  In those days, passing the P.E. includied licensure to survey,  It was several years later before I had the privelege of starting to pay two sets of license renewal fees and take 50 percent more continuing education courses.  And being hated by fellow surveyors who had no schooling but enough years of working in surveying to apply to take the exam.  Kansas had no specific schooling available that focused on surveying other than what was taught to engineering students at three large universities.  Things have improved over the past 45 years but it has been too slow to keep up with the need for well-trained students.

@holy-cow, I never intended to become an engineer.  After getting my LS, I went to work for an engineering firm computing road alignments and rights of way.  One day the president of the firm came by and asked me why I had never applied for the PE exam.  We were a relatively small firm (35 employees) and they wanted to improve the company resume.  I took the EIT knowing I was going to fail it the first time, so I didn't study at all.  I just figured it would show me what I needed to study for the next exam.  Imagine my surprise when I got the letter saying I had made a 71 (70 was passing).  The EIT was, by far, the hardest exam I ever took in my life.  ALL disciplines of engineering in one exam.  The PE exam that I took was for "General Civil", (not offered any more), it had a horizontal curve problem in the morning and vertical curve in the afternoon.  I forget what my score was, but it was plenty to pass.  I guess I was good at exams because of the 5 that I took (LSIT and LS in Georgia, EIT and PE in Georgia, and LS in Tennessee) I passed the first time in all.  It does help to have "Multiple Guess" exams though.  I can usually rule out one or two answers before getting serious.

I have used my PE stamp a total of twice.  Once for a surveying "As-built" that required a PE stamp because it was funded by EPA (even though it was TOTALLY done by surveyors) and once for a hunting lodge that moved a window within 18 inches of a corner.  I had them double up on the studs and add some "knee braces" and put my stamp on the letter.

Andy

@andy-bruner 

You ARE very good at exams.  I worked with a fellow who had made it about half way through some engineering discipline and waited about 20 years to apply for the EIT.  When I heard what he was attempting, he explained he had already attempted the EIT about six times as I recall.  I would not have even tried.  He was an excellent draftsman, though, in the days when everything was pencil on paper or ink on linen.  Draftsmen today have absolutely no idea how difficult it was to draft by hand with even pencil on paper, forget about ink on linen.