Old Calculator Web Museum
oldcalculatormuseum.com
oldcalculatormuseum.com
A more user-oriented HP site is here: https://www.hpcalc.org/
These were really amazing little machines, particularly for their time. HP had a custom CPU architecture optimized for low power consumption and calculator operations (think BCD floating point). By the time they got to the HP-28C and -19B, they had a custom OS/Language that had elements of both Forth and Lisp, and was pervasive throughout the software stack. (ie: the user programming language was a subset of the same language HP used to program the calculator itself.)
You might also have liked the 42S... it was built to be as a more direct successor to the 41's. The UI is much more similar to the 41 than the 28/48/etc.
> I did buy a 28(something) at one point but I didn't love it.
The 28/48 was much more powerful, but it was also a fairly radical shift in approach. The interface got heavier weight, with more to interpret on the display, more keystrokes for many operations, and just generally more to manage. I liked it, but in retrospect mainly because it was a portable computer I could play around with during school, etc.
I think it's also the case that HP's interest in the calculator market was falling off right as RPL (19B, 28, 48, ...) was hitting its stride. TI took over the educational market starting with the TI-30 and TI-81, and computers took over the professional market - so there wasn't much room anymore for a professional HP calculator by the time the early 90's rolled around. (Or at least not enough of a market for the calculator business unit to gain traction within HP to fund its development efforts. My guess is that, as is often the case, the opportunity cost of pursuing a relatively small market was viewed to be excessive when there were other things to do.)
The contrast between the 1972 introduction of the HP-35 and 1993's 48-GX is also striking. The HP-35 got developed because the 'H' of HP wanted it, and even then, he commissioned market research studies and held back the usual development funding. Once developed, the HP-35 sold well, even at >$2K 2016 dollars, due to the fact that the best alternative was either a slide rule or a minicomputer. If it took that much political power within 1972-era HP to sell a product with a such a compelling advantage, it's not hard to see how badly the complete landscape shifted against further calculator development by the time the 90's rolled around.
All that's to say that the RPL platform only got a couple rounds of significant internal development funding by HP. At one point, I'd have really liked to see what they could've done with another round or two of development. And then I graduated high school, got more access to real computers, and it didn't really matter any more.
Those go for some pretty good money, don't they. I actually just picked up a couple of things that I can hopefully use to repair my HP-41CV.
>The 28/48 was much more powerful, but it was also a fairly radical shift in approach.
Yeah. I think that was the thing. I'd been using an HP-55 since the campus store had some almost affordable overstock in about 1977. (When I started college, I got a TI scientific calculator because the HPs were still so pricey. Pricing dropped pretty radically over a few years.) I picked up the 28S at one point but I didn't really need a calculator by then for anything fancy and I never got into the UI and clamshell ergonomics.
Yes, both the 42S and 16C sell for more than the 48's do these days.
Sad to see that line ending.
https://www.amazon.com/HP-28S-Advanced-Scientific-Calculator...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tovgotxn0lmmjg2/File%20Dec%2001%2C...
I've got a couple of 12Cs and an 11C. I use them occasionally, whenever I need to do some maths that's not complicated enough to warrant firing up Excel but too much for my feeble mental maths.
Several years ago I took a university final and the requirement was a non-programmable calculator. I looked on eBay and discovered how expensive an 11C would be, so I went to the professor and explained that I was by this point in life incapable of using an algebraic calculator and pleaded to be able to use one of my HPs instead. Thankfully he didn't care.
"The Arithmeum presents the history of mechanical calculating machines, as well as the computing of today, in an aesthetically pleasing environment. Many demonstration models invite the visitor to discover the historical milestones of mechanical calculating, and at interactive multimedia stations the visitor can develop small microprocessors in a playful way. Early highlights in the development of computers are also exhibited."
He used it even though he had an electronic calculator. Common business calculations seemed to perform much faster and more reliably than on the electronic calculator (1980s). You had to check every single number and operation you typed into the electronic calculator, but you could do quite a bit without looking, just by feel, with this mechanical one. Multiplication for example, you just turn the crank handle for each round.
It's long ago but mine might have been the Sinclair Cambridge Scientific: http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/cambridge_scienific.h...
What hath god wrought!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORDIC#Factor_combining
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004
There is a direct line back from the Intel x86 architecture all the way back to that 4004.
Another neat little item in the same line:
I've been on the lookout for an affordable one for the longest time but so far no luck.
javascript:(function() { node = document.createElement('style'); node.innerHTML ="body{margin:40px auto;max-width:750px;line-height:1.6;font-size:18px;padding:0 10px; background-color:#eee;}h1,h2,h3{line-height:1.2}"; document.body.appendChild(node);})();Mach 1 Slide Rulette - made in 1972, one of my older ones. Has a really nice glowing green VFD, vacuum fluorescent display. Obviously very well made.
Sears M8 - made in 1973 by Sears, came in a nice black leather carrying case. The side of the calculator has an orange stripe down it, which makes the whole thing look gorgeous.
Sharp EL-827 - made in 1981, my #1 favorite, a musical calculator. It's fairly quiet, but you can hear it in a quiet room easily. The keys each have different notes for them, so you can play songs on it. I've learned a handful of songs on it myself. A really tiny, little, gorgeous thing - slimline, brushed metal, super thin. Just beautiful.
Eventually people started using them as toys or musical instruments, so some calculator companies started making the sounds less robotic and more musical - and now there are "musical calculators".
16017 * 5
http://www.vintagecalculators.com
Great details about old and exotic display and memory technologies too.
I think I like the Sumtronics Comptometer the most, for its excellent name and its vacuum tube internals. The Mathatron is a close second.
http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/curta2.html
Edit: check out its case and the tear down, it’s so great.
At the end is the ‘Iron Felix’, a Stalin era arithmometer, which is a bit less compact.
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/09/stunningly-intricate...
It had CRT vector display of numbers ... For 1965 on a table-top model!
And memory was realized via a mechanic delay line, where the bits traveled around a loop, mechanically!