I knew what he was referring to when I first read the stories- -but calculators at that time were heavy, expensive mechanical gadgets with lots of gears. I was 5 or 6 years out of college before the first electtonic calculators appeared. And they were expensive. The first one I bought was a four-function (+,-,X,/) job with all of ONE memory cell- -and it cost over $200!
Computers were big machines that filled large rooms.
So did they let you use programmable calculators? Do they let kids and high school students and college students use them now? As I pointed out, they are a great way to cheat by the standards I grew up with.