Me, My Family and My Hobbies

Born in the summer of the wonderful year 1960 I grew up in the southern part of Germany. Always interested in technology and electronics I was fascinated from the upcoming portable calculators. Unfortunately it took years before I got my first own electronic wizard, the Texas Instruments SR-50A. It was an expensive but wonderful machine, and yes, it survived my first attacks with the screwdriver. Purchase price was DM 252.-, a lot of money for a 15 years old teener. Everything else like the SR-56 was a dream but motivated to earn some money beside school the next two years. Then, end of 1977, I bought my next calculator, the amazing TI-58. Yes, we wrote a lot of programms that time on our calculators, best of all was the simulation of the lunar landing. Same time one of the department stores in the neighborhood sold a 5 years old Texas Instruments Datamath, if I remember right it was something like DM 5.-, a real bargain. The batteries were down, but I was used in soldering.

But why collecting calculators and such a focus on TI products ?

Two events influenced me in the 70th's toward the Texas Instruments company. In the year 1974 a magazine for hobbiests published the schematics of a electronic dice using 7 red light diodes and three integrated circuits to give a random number between one and six. The circuit worked but due to my mistake the counter circuit (A SN7492) died. To get an answer about the fault I've sent this IC to the German agency of Texas Instruments and they honored my letter with a set of 75 different IC's. What a find for a young hobbiest ! This was the reason why I first bought the SR-50A manufactured by Texas Instruments and not a Commodore, Lloyds or Privileg calculator.
Years later, another magazine celebrated "20 Years of Microelectronic" and I noticed in one article a picture of the first calculator built by Texas Instruments, the Datamath. Well, I remembered my above mentioned bargain calculator and compared it with the pictured one. I guess you know the quiz searching all differences between identical pictures. Yes, there was a great flaw, the pictured calculator featured a %-key, my bargain Datamath not. I wrote again a letter to Texas Instruments and they told me that they produced different versions of the Datamath and my calculator (a TI-2500 Version 2) is indeed older than the pictured one (a TI-2500-II).
At the end I decided to collect calculators, starting with bargains and today I own some 1300 machines and like to share them with you.

And the real life ?

Today I'm an engineer designing opto-electronic products like Barcode Readers and Laser Radars, find a more detailed description under www.leuze.de. I'm married with Barbara, a biologist and we have four children named Andreas, Manuel, Stefan and Jana. Barbara did recently an education as a PR-consultant, due to her perfect knowledge in the presentation skills she helps me a lot. The four youngsters usually testdrive the products featured in the Datamath Calculator Museum, main interests are the Speech products from Texas Instruments.

And the hobbies ?

To be honest to you, calculator collecting is not the main interest in our family! We love to travel around in Europe, for that reason we purchased few years ago a huge camper capable to accommodate a family with four children. Up to now the trips brought us to flat countries like Netherland and France, to enlarge the routes we purchased in the meantime a Land Rover Discovery. This fantastic car is able to tow up to 3.5 tons and we travel quiet and relaxed longer distances.  

PART II: Our Great Adventure

It was about October, 2005 when we started at Leuze electronic to discuss the idea of a new Research + Development center situated in Rochester, NY. Yes, "the" Rochester known from these companies like Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, and the famous RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology). Insider call Rochester simply Optical City and this makes it desirous for a manufacturer of opto-electronic products like Leuze to be there. It took just a short trip to Detroit, MI and Rochester, NY to convince the family that I should apply for this challenging opportunity. A few weeks later were the business plans finalized and our project "Liberty - or Move 'Em" was released on January 2^nd, 2006.

Preparation

The year 2006 started with a tough project plan and we affirmed by ordering 6 One-way tickets from Frankfurt, Germany to Detroit, Michigan. My wife Barbara ones again demonstrated outstanding talents in organizing "events". She was responsible for taking care about reducing our inventory to fit into one of these 40-ft shipping containers. We sold or donated lots of stuff and even trashed about 7 cbm (200 cubic feet) of items not so useful in the US. 

We really had to rack our brains about my huge calculator collection. With more than 200 boxes it added about 10 cbm (almost 300 cubic feet) to our inventory and the additional shipment costs were estimated to about US$ 2,000. Selling for a good money failed but finally Texas Instruments agreed to pay for these additional expenses. Thanks to Dallas!

You need another real experience in your life? Think about shipping all of your belongings with a container vessel over the sea. You kiss a lot of your memories in a few moments Good Bye when the truck leaves your home.

Living some days homeless in a comfortable hotel was a good experience, you really feel pampered these days. In the midst of the German Soccer Championships we had plans for every evening before the day of the departure. A company driver brought us in a van to the airport of Frankfurt with only few belongings:

The trip itself was smooth and comfortable, we even knew our pilot and managed to raise the temperature in the freight department a few degrees for our little animals.

Buying a home in the US is pretty easy, we finished a deal already 2 month before we moved. But the sellers cheated us and sold the house twice. Three weeks before we arrived in Rochester, NY a family from Florida moved into "our" house. We started over with the search again and opted in the meantime a wonderful furnished apartment in West Henrietta, a suburb of Rochester. 

Actually a win-win situation because the kids made immediately friends and had a wonderful summer there and we found a house fulfilling our requirements even better than the original purchase.

We sold our cars, a Toyota Corolla and a Land Rover Discovery, in Germany and thought about their successors. Despite all rumors about US cars, discovering the high price tag of German brands the decision was easy: Barbara loved the Chrysler PT Cruiser from the very first day she noticed it in Germany and I was just looking for a mid-size SUV to accommodate 2 adults and 4 kids.

You remember our hobby? Travelling around Europe with a camper. That's history but now we have about 48+ States to discover....   

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.

© Joerg Woerner, January 13, 2001. No reprints without written permission.