[ExI] the fun they had

[Damien Broderick]

On 10/19/2010 1:31 PM, spike wrote:

> OK as you can see if you read the short story, I missed it by a mile.  A
> grandfather was mentioned, but the two kids had little interaction with
> adults.  There was nothing about arithmetic, nothing about a lot of stuff I
> thought was in that story.

Certainly Asimov wrote one story about calculating without machines. 
Google takes me to:

<the 8,600-word short story, "A Feeling of Power," first published in 
1958. In the work, Asimov predicted widespread use of a handheld 
programmable calculator, multicolored for civilians, blue-steel for the 
military. But he set the scenario 400 years in the future, after the art 
of doing arithmetic by pencil and paper had been lost. In the story a 
lone genius re-invents manual math, and then commits suicide when the 
military takes over his research. >

Could that be what you were conflating with the kid story?

Damien Broderick