I never imagined that using a calculator emulator would be enjoyable. But here I am, playing about with the vintage graphing calculators that the Internet Archive has liberated from their plastic casings and made available online for everyone to enjoy.
This new collection is known as the Calculator Drawer on the Internet Archive. The HP 48GX, TI-82, TI-83 Plus, and even the Electronic Number Muncher, a toy calculator from the 1980s, are among the 14 available calculators. The Internet Archive replicates each device’s interface, but it also incorporates the physical layout and buttons, giving the impression that you are holding the real thing in your hands.
Kyle Allison, the corresponding author of the latest study, asserted that it was “perhaps the best-studied and best-understood organism in the world.” Therefore, there has been a trend among microbiologists to concentrate more on other bacteria, especially in the last 20 years or so. We’ve discovered a few things about bacteria that have never been observed before.
The most exciting new discovery is the possibility that E. coli wasn’t always a single-celled organism. In experiments using microfluidic devices and live cell imaging, the team discovered that, occasionally, individual bacteria will come together in groups of four to create rosettes, a cellular arrangement uncommon in single-celled organisms but essential for multicellular animals’ cell division.
With these simulations, you can enter numbers and functions by clicking on the buttons just as you would if you were to physically hit a calculator button with your finger. Even though you can enter numbers using your keyboard, doing so is a little more constrained because it doesn’t appear that you can enter any functions. A wonderful touch is that some of the gadgets, like the HP 48G+, even have sound. The Internet Archive has also posted a collection of the original user manuals in case you need a refresher on how to use these calculators.
Even if I have no personal experience with any of these gadgets, it’s still interesting to have the opportunity to test them out virtually. As a result of programming my TI-84 Plus to solve the equations for me in high school and college, I was able to skip learning how to factor.
