In modern money, that's $88.95! Because we haven't changed the unit of our currency, I mean. As for what it would cost today, it's probably a couple hundred bucks, but that's not counting the cost of ambergris lubricant, which the device required every six weeks.

Remarkable piece of machinery: it divides "even to negative answers." The answers appear "instantly, silently" - a welcome change from the calculators that took seven minutes before they displayed numbers with the sound of crashing dishes and gored oxen.

If you needed more than eight digits, the facing page has a 12-digit model for $128.95. Get it? Twelve digits for 12 sets of ten dollars; eight digits for eighty-eight dollars. Pure coincidence!

The styling, incidentally, was outsourced to Sears' Soviet division, which used several prototypes they had rejected for aesthetic reasons.