Most high-schoolers know what a TI series calculator is. For those who don’t, it is a graphing calculator made by Texas Instruments. This series of calculators includes the TI-89, the TI-92, the TI-92 Plus, and the the Voyage 200. The TI-92’s came out in the mid and late 1990s while the Voyage 200 came out in 2002. There is one big difference between the TI-89 and the later series, though.
The TI-92s have a QWERTY keyboard. A QWERTY keyboard is the most common modern day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six keys appearing in the top left letter row of the keyboard and read from left to right. It goes back as far as some of the first typewriters in 1878. However, while the success of the QWERTY keyboard has been proven, it didn’t work out so well for the TI-92 series calculators.
Since they had this type of keyboard, they were classified as “computers.” Students, then, were not allowed to use these calculators on standardized tests like the SAT or AP exams. The TI-89 on the other hand is acceptable because it doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard.