Texas Instruments Advert - November 1978
From Practical Computing
New from Texas Instruments. The world's most powerful pocket calculators. For the easiest problem solving ever.
From the company which "made micro-electronic calculators and watches possible" - Texas Instruments - comes a contender for Commdore's "button monster" crown, albeit with a mere 45 buttons compared to Commodore's 60.
It's actually for two of TI's calculators - the modestly-priced programmable TI-58 at £79.95, or about £620 in 2025, and the somewhat loftier-priced TI-59, at a whopping £199.95. That's around £1,550 in 2025 money.
Both calculators supported plug-in memory modules, which could contain ready-made programs such as Applied Statistics or the Master Library, whilst the more expensive of the two also offered program storage on magnetic swipe cards.
Texas Instruments was a major supplier of chips to other calculator manufacturers. However, in the mid 1970s it entered the calculator market itself and started selling some of its cheaper models for less than the cost of the components it sold to other companies.
This kicked off the "Calculator Wars", which bankrupted several companies along the way, however arch-rival Commodore held on by shifting its focus to the European calculator market but also buy buying its own chip supplier - MOS Technology - which enabled it to survive long enough to launch its PET personal computer in 1977.
Date created: 25 July 2025
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