Before AI Rewrote the Rules, the Calculator Broke Them
In 1972, this tool caused the same panic ChatGPT is causing now.
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Hi friends 👋,
Happy Thursday!
Over the weekend, I was talking with my parents about how much tech has changed since they were kids. They remembered parents panicking over TVs, worrying that television would make kids passive, kill imagination, and reduce reading and learning ability. I remembered my parents worrying about scientific calculators when I was a kid. And now, I’m the one doing the worrying, thinking about how AI might shape the world my own kid grows up in.
It’s a strange thing, being a tech optimist who also feels the pressure. As a developer, I can see just how fast AI is moving. It’s exciting. But when the change hits close to home—your skills, your work, your identity—it stops being an abstract trend and starts feeling personal. That tension is worth sitting with.
So this week’s post isn’t about panic. It’s about perspective.
Because while it’s easy to feel like everything is new and uncertain, history has a funny way of rhyming.
The first big "AI panic" didn’t involve AI at all.
It started with calculators.
Alright, let’s get to it.
Before ChatGPT, There Was Datamath
In 1972, Texas Instruments launched a $150 handheld calculator called the Datamath TI-2500.
It was boxy, red-LED’d, and slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes.
But to engineers and businesspeople, it was a revelation: you could suddenly do square roots on the go without whipping out a slide rule, hiring a clerk, or swearing in front of a mechanical adding machine.
Within three years, calculators were everywhere – by 1975, there was roughly one for every nine Americans.
It was the first time in history that silicon chips snuck into everyday life through a pocket device.
Not a PC.
Not a phone.
A calculator.
And just like today’s AI tools, it freaked people out.
The First "AI Panic": Math Teachers in 1976
By the mid-70s, math teachers were sounding alarms that sound eerily familiar today.
“Students will forget how to think.”
“The machines are doing the work for them.”
“It’s not real learning.”
A full 72% of educators opposed giving calculators to seventh graders.
Parents worried that their kids would “plug and chug” their way through algebra without ever understanding long division.
Entire debates erupted over whether calculators should be allowed on standardized tests. (Spoiler: by 2002, the SAT caved.)
Yet by the mid-90s, the TI-83 was a back-to-school staple, graphing parabolas while stashed in your Jansport.
Texas Instruments had won.
And education had adapted.
History Repeats: But the Interface Is Smarter
Swap out “calculator” for “ChatGPT” and “math teachers” for “English professors,” and you basically get today’s conversation.
The concern: “AI will make students lazy.”
The reality: “AI changes what’s teachable.”
In the 70s, teachers eventually leaned into calculators: by removing tedious arithmetic, they could spend more time on problem-solving, estimation, and conceptual thinking.
By the 2000s, even critics admitted that calculators hadn’t dumbed us down; they’d shifted how we learn math.
We’re now at the same inflection point in writing, programming, even legal research.
Except the tools have moved from deterministic number crunchers to probabilistic, pattern-completing agents.
And that difference matters.
Tool vs. Agent: Why AI Isn’t Just a Smarter Calculator
Here’s the simplest way to think about it:
Calculator: You tell it exactly what to do. It does it. Predictably.
AI: You nudge it in a direction. It decides how to get there.
A calculator is a hammer: it does nothing until you swing.
AI is closer to a hired contractor who occasionally builds you a gazebo when you asked for a shed.
This shift from tool → agent is more than semantics.
It raises questions we never had to ask about calculators:
What if it gives a wrong answer with full confidence?
What if it hallucinates?
Who’s accountable?
It’s the difference between pressing “=“ and watching a system make 10 moves you don’t fully see.
Which is why, for all the handwringing, today’s AI panic might actually be more justified than the one in 1976.
What Calculators Did to Engineering, AI Is Doing to Knowledge Work
Let’s zoom out from classrooms.
Back in the 70s, calculators didn’t just help kids cheat on math homework.
They fundamentally changed engineering workflows:
Slide rules were tossed in drawers.
Clerical roles like adding-machine operators started disappearing.
Engineers who could adapt to calculators and later CAD tools became far more productive.
Yet engineering jobs didn’t vanish. They multiplied.
Because just like today’s AI agents don’t eliminate software developers, calculators didn’t eliminate engineers.
They just removed the drudgery and raised the floor of what baseline productivity looked like.
In other words: tools didn’t kill jobs, they killed bad workflows.
This holds up across decades.
In fact, a labor study at the time concluded that while microelectronic tools were labor-saving, they created new categories of work just as fast as they replaced old ones.
Sound familiar?
Moore’s Law and the March to $10 Calculators
Here’s a nerdy but important aside.
TI wasn’t just making school gadgets.
It was riding the semiconductor wave in lockstep with Moore’s Law.
From 1972 to 1982, calculator prices dropped from $150 to under $10.
TI started with four-function machines (TI-2500), then scientific models (SR-10), then programmable ones (Little Professor), then graphing calcs (TI-81 to TI-89 Titanium).
Each generation offered more power at lower cost.
TI likes to say it invented the handheld calculator in 1967 and they’re not wrong, technically.
Okay, that deserves a quick nerd tangent.
In 1967, three Texas Instruments engineers built a prototype called “Cal-Tech,” the first handheld calculator ever made. TI filed the patent that same year, but it wasn't granted until 1974.
But, as with many tech stories, being first doesn't always mean being the first to market… Someone else got to market first.
That someone was Sharp.
In late 1969, Sharp launched the QT-8D, the first mass-produced calculator using large-scale integrated circuits. Then, in mid-1970, they released the QT-8B, the battery-powered version, making portable calculators a reality.
TI eventually entered the calculator market themselves in the early '70s.
I love this story because it’s a classic case of “inventor vs. first mover.” TI had the innovation. Sharp got it into consumers' hands first.
By 2024, TI still sells calculators but over 80% of its $15B+ revenue comes from analog chips and embedded processors.
Calculators weren’t the endgame, they were the gateway.
That’s exactly what’s happening with AI.
Models are racing to the bottom. They’re getting faster faster, cheaper, open-sourced.
The real edge isn’t the model. It’s everything around it: the interface, the integrations, the infrastructure.
Yes, the wrappers.
AI wrappers are hitting $100M in revenue in months, while model providers compete on price and speed.
Even OpenAI is shifting its focus from building the best model to delivering the best product experience.
The “TI” of AI might not be the model maker.
It might be whoever builds the graphing calculator for reasoning.
What This Means for Builders, Teachers, and Everyone Else
A math teacher on Reddit now requires students to submit ChatGPT’s answer alongside their own.
If you’re a technologist, here’s your homework:
Don’t fight the wave. Ride it like TI did.
Assume drudgery is doomed. Optimize for the tasks that can’t be automated away.
Build for augmentation, not substitution.
If you’re an educator:
Teach students how to think with tools, not without them.
Reinforce fundamentals through “show your work” policies.
Accept that the prompt is the new equation.
And for everyone else worried about AI? Here’s the takeaway:
AI is not the first technology that made us question human skill. It won’t be the last. But if calculators are any clue, we’ll survive. And probably get better.
We just need to stop asking if the tools are too powerful.
And start asking: What’s possible now that they are?