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Encyclopedia > HP calculators

HP Calculators refer to various calculators manufactured by the Hewlett-Packard company over the years. This is a list of types of calculators, many of which are obsolete but hoarded by legions of admiring collectors. ... The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ...

Contents


History

In the 1960s, Hewlett-Packard was becoming a diversified electronics company with product lines in electronic test equipment, scientific instrumentation, and medical electronics, and was just beginning its entré into computers. The corporation recognized two opportunities: The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ... Two digital voltmeters The field of electronics is the study and use of systems that operate by controlling the flow of electrons or other electrically charged particles in devices such as thermionic valves and semiconductors. ... Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax contemplating measuring instruments in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea In physics and engineering, measurement is the activity of comparing physical quantities of real-world objects and events. ... An instrument is a concrete or abstract tool intended for a purpose other than mechanical work, in particular a refined one. ... A drawing of a desktop computer. ...

  • It might be possible to automate the instrumentation that HP was producing, and
  • HP's customer base would likely buy a product that could replace the slide rules and adding machines that they were now using for computation.

With this in mind, HP built the HP 9100 desktop scientific calculator. This was a fully-featured calculator that not only included standard "adding machine" functions but also included powerful capabilities to handle: The slide rule, or slipstick, is an analog computer, usually consisting of three interlocking calibrated strips and a sliding window, called the cursor. ... An adding machine is a type of calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations. ...

This was an excellent machine and was well received by the customer base, but William Hewlett saw additional opportunities if the desktop calculator could be made small enough to fit into his shirt pocket. He charged his engineers with this exact goal (to the point that they measured his shirt pocket!). A floating-point number is a digital representation for a number in a certain subset of the rational numbers, and is often used to approximate an arbitrary real number on a computer. ... Trigonometry (from the Greek trigonon = three angles and metro = measure) is a branch of mathematics dealing with angles, triangles and trigonometric functions such as sine, cosine and tangent. ... Logarithms to various bases: red is to base e, green is to base 10, and purple is to base 1. ... William Reddington Hewlett (May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). ...


The result was the HP-35 calculator. This calculator provided functionality that was revolutionary for a pocket calculator at that time, and it did fit into Bill Hewlett’s shirt pocket. Through the years, HP released several calculators that varied in their mathematical capabilities, programmability, and I/O capabilities. Some of them could be used (via HP-IL) to control the instruments other Hewlett Packard divisions produced. An HP-35 calculator The HP-35 was Hewlett-Packards first pocket calculator and the worlds first scientific pocket calculator (a calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions). ... The HP-IL (Hewlett-Packard Interface Loop) is a short range network cable enabling several devices such as printers, floppy disk drives, tape readers, etc. ...


Characteristics

HP Calculators are well-known for their use of Reverse Polish notation. Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as postfix notation, was invented by Australian philosopher and computer scientist Charles Hamblin in the mid-1950s, to enable zero-address memory stores. ...


Programmable HP calculators allow users to create their own programs as well as share them over the internet.


Calculators

See also: List_of_calculators#Hewlett-Packard This is a list of types of calculators, many of which are obsolete but hoarded by legions of admiring collectors. ...


Below are some of HP’s calculator models produced over the years, in numeric rather than chronological order:

  • HP-12C – The financially centric calculator from the HP-10 series introduced in the 1980s. The longest running product in the HP calculator line, it remains in production.
  • HP-20S -- A basic scientific calculator, using infix notation, barely programmable and with no graphing capabilities.
  • HP-25 - The Owner's Handbook is dated 1975. Programs could be written with up to 49 steps, its batteries were rechargeable with charger included. Reverse Polish notation (RPN) was used.
  • HP-35 -- The original
  • HP-38 -- a simplified succesor to the HP-48, using infix notation.
  • HP-41 series – Three models in this series were released over its lifetime, the 41C, 41CV, and 41CX. The 41C had user configurable program steps and memory registers, alpha-numeric display, user programmable key mappings, and 4 expansion ports that could hold additional memory, an interface to HP-IL peripherals, a magnetic card reader/writer, or commercial application programs. The 41CV quadrupled the amount of base memory, and the 41CX added a clock and some additional functions and memory.
  • HP-42S – a non-expandable follow-up to the HP-41 series. It included a two line display (dot addressable) and featured built-in matrix and complex number math.
  • HP-48 series. Historically one of the most popular models among engineers; programmable and with graphics.
  • HP-49 series
  • HP-67 and HP-97

The HP-12C is a financial calculator made by Hewlett-Packard. ... The 1980s decade refers to the years from 1980 to 1989, inclusive. ... This article is in need of attention. ... Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as postfix notation, was invented by Australian philosopher and computer scientist Charles Hamblin in the mid-1950s, to enable zero-address memory stores. ... An HP-35 calculator The HP-35 was Hewlett-Packards first pocket calculator and the worlds first scientific pocket calculator (a calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions). ... The HP-41 series are programmable, expandable, handheld RPN calculators made by Hewlett-Packard from 1979 to 1990. ... The HP 42S was released to be a replacement for the aging HP41 series. ... The HP-48 is a series of graphing calculators produced by Hewlett-Packard (HP) from 1990 until 2003, using Reverse Polish notation (RPN). ... The HP-49G series are Hewlett-Packard (HP)-manufactured graphing calculators. ...

External links

  • HPMuseum.org Museum of slide rules and significant HP calculators
  • HPCalc.org Information about and software for HP programmable calculators

The HP museum has a wealth of historical information about the different models, and may be a good starting point for anyone considering buying a second hand calculator. There is a lively market in old HP calculators on Internet auction sites. The HPCalc.org site provides a place for calculator programmers to share programs, and is a good source of calculator emulation programs for the PC.


  Results from FactBites:
 
HP Calculators: HP Feature story (September 2006) (1117 words)
The HP 39gs is a graphing calculator that high school students and teachers can rely on to square off against complex math problems and perform other sophisticated operations.
HP was the first major manufacturer to offer a calculator with this feature.
HP Solve reduces input time by letting you write and solve equations for any variable without having to re-enter or modify the original equation.
HP 9100A/B (2342 words)
When people first encounter HP's RPN calculators, they often wonder about the stack labels X, Y, Z, and T. The HP 9100 had a three level stack with registers X, Y, and Z. X was called the keyboard register since numbers were keyed into it.
HP combined these ideas, plus elements from their early computers (HP-2114/2116) and displays, and added programmability, printing, etc. For more details see: How the Model 9100A Was Developed.
After the HP 9100 was demonstrated to Bill Hewlett he suggested that they should make one in one tenth the volume, ten times as fast and at one tenth the cost.
  More results at FactBites »

 

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