I’ve never been a big fan of dual-purposes devices, as they often wind up doing neither function particularly well. Here’s an example sent in by Ian Benton of his solar-powered calculator and tape measurer that allows the user to do both, just not at the same time!
“I thought this device would be handy for working out the area of a room. I measured the length, and entered it into the calculator memory. I then measured the width of the room. In doing so, my hand covered up the solar panel that powered the calculator, which caused it to lose the number in its memory.Now I know why it includes a notepad and pencil! I suppose I could use the calculator to convert inches to millimetres, but the tape is already marked in both imperial and metric. “
This post appeared in sister publication Electronic Weekly’s MBM blog.