Texas Instruments Little Professor

Summary

The “Little Professor” is a series of electronic toys by Texas Instruments (TI), which addresses children between the ages of 5 and 9 to learn arithmetic. In 1976 the first Little Professor comes out. It is not a calculator in the actual sense, because it works “backwards”. After switching on, the player selects a difficulty level between 1 (“very easy”) and 4 (“difficult”) and the little professor presents a small calculation task, about 3+2=. The player must enter the result in response. With the right one there is a star, with a wrong solution the display shows “EEE” (later versions show “Err”). After the third wrong result, it shows the right solution.

The Little Professor has changed only slightly with technical developments. Newer versions have five difficulty levels, and a correct answer makes the professor’s hat jump and his moustache wiggle on the display. A learning game teaches multiplication tables. The current Little Professor Solar costs less than EUR 20 in shops and remains a motivating maths game for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division rather than a calculator.