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The early history of HP calculators

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Re: The early history of HP calculators

#41

Post by [deleted] »

jhbadger wrote: post #35
waynecochran wrote: post #29

When I started college in 1985, every Physics student had an HP41C. You were at a distinct disadvantage on an exam if you had an infix calculator. I still have my HP41CX that my dad bought me in 1985. Now I don't see any of the students using them. What happened? When I used to teach, I would write a large expression on the board and challenge students to a calculator duel -- me using my 1985 HP41CX and them using th…

Basically after the merger with Compaq in 2001, HP lost interest in their calculators. They still technically sell them, but they aren't advertised to any degree. Obviously since the advent of the smartphone the need for dedicated calculators is lessened, but as you say, the haptic feedback is nice and TI seems to be still selling a lot of calculators.

[deleted]

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#42

Post by na85 »

dm319 wrote: post #16

Getting good condition HP calculators can be quite expensive second hand. People interested in buying a new one should check out swissmicros [1]. They are bringing out an HP42s clone with quad precision decimal accuracy, which I'm looking forward to! [2] [1] http://www.swissmicros.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LatjXPgLI8 EDIT: I don't have any involvement with swissmicros apart from anticipating their new…

I bought an HP50g, new, just a few years ago after my 48 died. I believe that they have a new one called the Prime that's still in production.

My 50g is an excellent machine.

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#43

Post by Theodores »

jimnotgym wrote: post #3

I'm too young to remember, but it seems the UK calculator of choice was the Sinclair http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/sinclair1.html

This article is much like the US rather than the UK history where we had a separate, home grown path. I think I am the last generation to have a legendary calculator in the Casio FX 82A. Nowadays computers have taken over.

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#44

Post by agumonkey »

vram22 wrote: post #40
agumonkey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love stack languages. Forth, Factor, Joy, Cat .. (all the concatenative crew). ps: there are some Chuck Moore talks on youtube that are worth gold. His CPUs are heaven

Can you please give links for those of his videos that you liked?

My bad, my favorite wasn't on youtube, but infoq (thanks to them) https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip

then https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chuck+moore+ga1...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBjuSCX8jE

and Kalny's videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSTjQA-iz4w

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#45

Post by keenerd »

jhbadger wrote: post #35
waynecochran wrote: post #29

When I started college in 1985, every Physics student had an HP41C. You were at a distinct disadvantage on an exam if you had an infix calculator. I still have my HP41CX that my dad bought me in 1985. Now I don't see any of the students using them. What happened? When I used to teach, I would write a large expression on the board and challenge students to a calculator duel -- me using my 1985 HP41CX and them using th…

Basically after the merger with Compaq in 2001, HP lost interest in their calculators. They still technically sell them, but they aren't advertised to any degree. Obviously since the advent of the smartphone the need for dedicated calculators is lessened, but as you say, the haptic feedback is nice and TI seems to be still selling a lot of calculators.

They were dying long before smartphones. Cheap Casio calculators happened. I have a little $15 Casio scientific calculator and it has been all that I've needed for college and professional work. But it can take integrals, derivatives and has a general newtonian solver. It covers everything except matrices. Those are miserable to do on any calculator so I'm not missing much.

In all my life I've only ever seen two HP RPN calculators. One belonged to my high-school chem teacher, the other to a real estate agent. If there were a $30 RPN calculator with similar functions, I would use it.

Edit: 18 years later and they still make it, https://www.casio.com/products/calculators/fraction-and-scie...

Edit2: Looks like the most readily available RPN calculators are the HP 35S ($55) and HP 12C ($50).

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#46

Post by vram22 »

vram22 wrote: post #40
agumonkey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love stack languages. Forth, Factor, Joy, Cat .. (all the concatenative crew). ps: there are some Chuck Moore talks on youtube that are worth gold. His CPUs are heaven

Can you please give links for those of his videos that you liked?

Saw the links you posted, thank you.

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#47

Post by aryehof »

I had a HP-67, then a 41CV which I loved. Then I moved on to the 95LX, 100LX and 12C. Today it's a 12C emulator on my iPhone that I mostly use.

I grew up on RPN, and have always considered knowing it as a "strategic" advantage.

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#48

Post by LanceH »

jhbadger wrote: post #35
waynecochran wrote: post #29

When I started college in 1985, every Physics student had an HP41C. You were at a distinct disadvantage on an exam if you had an infix calculator. I still have my HP41CX that my dad bought me in 1985. Now I don't see any of the students using them. What happened? When I used to teach, I would write a large expression on the board and challenge students to a calculator duel -- me using my 1985 HP41CX and them using th…

Basically after the merger with Compaq in 2001, HP lost interest in their calculators. They still technically sell them, but they aren't advertised to any degree. Obviously since the advent of the smartphone the need for dedicated calculators is lessened, but as you say, the haptic feedback is nice and TI seems to be still selling a lot of calculators.

I would say it was the tight integration of the TI8* into the classroom that did it. Everyone's first scientific calculator was more or less required by some course.

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#49

Post by tremendo »

carussell wrote: post #38
jaclaz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, bad example. See here: http://calculatorauthority.com/why-use-a-reverse-polish-nota... >For example, we want to compute “(13+3)÷(4×2)” using a calculator of algebraic notation (not a scientific one) then we have to do many steps to reach the answer. Firstly, we have to compute “(13+3)” and then we will save the answer to the memory of the calculator. Then we have to compute the calculation in the denominator i.e…

[1 3 Enter 3 + 4 Enter 2 × ÷] is 10 button presses for RPN. [1 3 + 3 = ÷ 4 ÷ 2 =] is also 10 button presses, and how I would have entered it on an infix $10 TI-30XA during an exam. (At least, it's how I would have entered it if the figures weren't so small.) You could argue that it's cheating to "cook" the input beforehand so that the '4×2' divisor becomes two '4' and '2' divisors, but then you would have to ignore t…

LOL why bother with a calculator? 16 ÷ 8 easy! I always think of RPN as somewhat akin to using VIM (editor), once you learn it, it becomes unconscious, automatic. I for one don't see how the RPN form relies "on a more extensive cook".

Re: The early history of HP calculators

#50

Post by zokier »

brians wrote: post #39
zokier wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that has always befuddled me with HP calcs is their model numbers that don't seem to follow any rhyme or reason. How does the functionality of DM42 compare to for example WP34? And how does -48 compare, besides the relatively useless graphing capability? I see lots of people also preferring some other models (15, 16, 35, 41 etc), which I would have imagined to be strict subsets of these "juggernauts", but m…

The 48s show you four rows of stack at a time, and can use that to show a single long expression. That can be a huge difference—though of course, unlike the time when these were built, we have Octave and similar right there .

DM-42 seems to also feature multiline display (I'm kinda assuming that it will be showing the stack?), so that advantage is mostly negated there?
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