Miles enters his test results into the RIC 920, originally uploaded by johntynan.

A long time ago, I told Rene a story about how my father and I used to identify rocks and minerals together using a “rock computer.” Recently, Rene surprised me by finding and successfully bidding on a Skilcraft RIC 920 Rock Identification Computer. Today, Miles and I identified sulfur and conducted numerous tests that the inventors of the RIC 920 had not even envisioned.

The RIC 920 uses 1970’s futuristic punch cards to enable budding geologists distinguish between calcite from sulfur from lodestone and more…