When the first electronic calculators came out here they were about $400NZ - they could + - * / do inverse, square and square root - and that was it really. I waited a while and got one of the early scientific ones that did trig functions, by then that level of functionality was about $500.
Ironically when our next generation of survey cadets came to us, they were used to doing it all on their calculators. If the batteries on their calculators died they wanted to pack up and go back, to which the response was "no way, that's too much wasted time". They were a bit crestfallen when we tossed them a book of 7-figure Trig and logarithmic tables and told them to keep working!