SHARP EL-508A
=============

I have bought this calculator. It's not  new. I thought that it is from
early 1980 but it  seems to be from 1975 [1]! I gave  got it because of
my current nostalgic mood.

When I was  a pupil I had  this calculator. Actually I  used it through
all my school  years (at a basic  school, at a hight school  and ad the
university). It  definitively broke  when I was  already a  Ph.D. There
were several liquid crystals leakage (yes,  if has a LCD) and some keys
were  worn off.  I still  have it  somewhere. If  I'm not  mistaken the
keyboard was produced on 1982 and I used it from about 1984.

Now I  have got  an another one.  It is almost  intact. It  is probably
newer than my old  one and was probably used only  few times (there are
no  scratches and  no  dirt). There  were  two SHARP-branded  batteries
inserted. If I  understand their labels the batteries  were produced in
1986. Most  probably these batteries  are the original ones  which were
sold as  set with the  device. SO I can  assume that the  calculator is
from about 1986, too. The serial number  is 3V148088 but I have no idea
how to read it.

I remember  that the factorial function  (n!) was slow here.  Well, the
"69!" takes more  than 5 seconds. That's not that  bad (the goniometric
functions are almost instant).

Most probably I will not use it too  often - I also have a solar energy
based SHARP will identical functionality. It  is also a bit smaller and
I have a  pouch for it. So  it's a much better  solution for situations
when I want to use a small, simple scientific calculator.


But I'm feeling very nostalgic when I'm playing with this one...


References:

[1] https://www.calculator.org/calculators/Sharp_EL-508A.html