What’s a cruise missile if not an advanced calculator with an engine, some fins, some sensors and some servos.
Calculators? Did you mean “machines that can run DOOM”?
Good ol’ “aerospace and defense” industry. The backbone of every healthy society.
The largest year in the whole country.
tbf they are “TEXAS” instruments, this is very texas of them.
If you never sat around in class playing Pokémon on your TI-84 Plus after you finished your math exam earlier than the rest, you have no idea what true power feels like.
I wasn’t ti-84 plus rich. But I was palm pilot tungsten E rich, and played Pokemon and drug wars during class.
Back in the day we would type 58008 on our calculator and turn it upside down to satisfy our porn needs…
Wtf Pokémon? I thought I was hot shit with brick break and a couple other minor apps if I remember
And here I only had connect 4 and junk programmed into my Casio
Ah. That was one of my other apps for sure!
Dramatic exaggeration I assume. But there was a Super Mario clone (at least on my TI Voyage 200).
Nope. It was a „fully functioning“ version of Pokémon. Not an emulated one, super simplistic and it ran like ass, obviously something tinkered together by a fan, but still a version of it. The TI-84 Plus CE even had the GB Color versions on them fully emulated.
Sadly the TI-84 Plus CE only became the standard right after we graduated.
Woah nice, I wouldn’t have done much calculating anymore xD
Diversification
To their credit, TI will stop making calculators when the Earth becomes uninhabitable.
TI sold their defense segment business to Raytheon in the late 90s. I don’t think they make missiles anymore.
As the defense industry consolidated, TI sold its defense business to the Raytheon Company in 1997 for $2.95 billion. […] [1]
References
- “Texas Instruments”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-04T02:02Z. Accessed: 2025-01-09T19:01Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments#Missiles_and_laser-guided_bombs.
- §“History”. §“Defense Electronics”. §“Divestiture to Raytheon”. ¶1.
- “Texas Instruments”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-04T02:02Z. Accessed: 2025-01-09T19:01Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments#Missiles_and_laser-guided_bombs.
This goes all the way back to ancient Roman times (and earlier).
Roman Engineers: I guess we making bridges now.
Also Roman Engineers: What the fuck! Onagers? Scorpions? Siege towers?!
Texas Instruments of mass destruction.
Alt Text
spoiler
College Board issues aside, I have fond memories of TI-BASIC, writing in it a 3D graphing engine and a stock market analyzer. With enough patience, I could make anything … but friends. (Although with my chatterbot experiments, I certainly tried.)
Computer Shopper was the shit back in the day. Imagine Newegg’s listings of computer hardware bound up every month into a catalog.
I’d still like that to be available now so when I take shits in a scif I have something to read.
It’s called Texas Instruments… This was inevitable.
Texas Instruments (of murder)
You know you won capitalism when you start manufacturing weapons. Take note people.
Ryan Kelly has great videos regarding this very content: https://youtube.com/shorts/zHUgjC9-FUY
There are no instruments more Texan.
You’d think they would make banjos.
That’s Alabama.
I mean, a banjo could show up in country music of any kind, but it feels quite Appalachian to me. Though after looking apparently the top half of Alabama counts, anyway, so TIL!
Georgia answering the banjo call.
Apparently those hands belong to a real banjo player hidden behind the actor.
Wow, I didn’t know that. Mike Addis is the name of the hands.
