In 1977, something every boy wanted in their
Christmas stocking. Well, probably the second most sought after thing behind a
light sabre. Yes kids, when I was a lad
calculators were cool.
Texas Instruments produced this electronic educational toy, a silvery calculator device with a space age design. It could be used to solve rudimentary arithmetric problems (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division only), although it was limited to two digit whole integer numbers, and you had to have two guesses before the correct answer was revealed.
Get the question right and a neat pattern appears on the LED display. Get it wrong and Dataman furiously flashes a random display of characters back at you.
There were also games, like Electro Flash (solve problems against the clock) and Number Guesser (guess numbers).
It looked like a space ship, so whenever I wasn't using it for sums it was carrying out missions in a sandpit, attacking Lego or Fisher Price figurines, or the family cat.