It's good that some of these government-owned units were dispositioned as surplus rather than as trash.
When I was an engineering department officer on a US nuclear submarine 35 years ago, I got the ship to purchase a SR-52 mag card calculator and PC-100 printer for rad-chem lab use. (The SR-52 was considerably more capable than the HP-65, particularly with the support of the PC-100 printer.)
Then the HP-67/97 appeared. I used my new personal HP-67 for other reactor plant calculations. After that turned out to be so useful, I got the ship to purchase an HP-97. I had tried using the much more "featured" TI-59 with PC-100C, but after going through three TI-59s and two PC-100Cs in less than a year, I concluded that the latest TI gear was too unreliable for military use.
I'd love to know how long these units survived in service, and what ultimately happened to them (the boat was decommissioned in 1994). I suspect they most likely wound up in the trash long before that, and long before anyone valued old calculators.
I wouldn't mind having that HP-97 today!
Edited: 24 July 2009, 4:33 p.m.