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Perhaps even stranger: the HP-12c, a calculator that's effectively unchanged since the early 1980s, continues to sell well at a price higher than the new Amazo

Perhaps even stranger: the HP-12c, a calculator that's effectively unchanged since the early 1980s, continues to sell well at a price higher than the new Amazon tablets. It's not new, doesn't trade on exclusivity, and is easily available second-hand on eBay --- but still sells well brand-new. My old employer bought my first for me, at a cost of about £70 in 2011. It was a great purchase, and repaid itself many times over. The internals have changed, now running some kind of ARM emulator inside, but I have one from the '80s and another from 2012, and they operate identically. There are some superficial differences, but you could give a modern one to a user in 1985 and they'd be right at home. The Wall Street Journal wrote a nice retrospective of the HP12c for its 30th anniversary in 2011: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703841904576257440326458056 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487038419045762574...

Zombieball 11y ago
HP should revive the 16c! Given they still produce the 12c I imagine it would be quite simple to do. Maybe I am crazy but I've always felt there is still a strong demand for the 16c (but who knows given they did make the decision to halt production).
bsder 11y ago
In fact, calculator design seems to have gone backward. The HP48 was an amazing calculator for engineers. It often sells on Ebay for more than HP's current highest-end calculators do brand new. The problem is that HP's calculator division originally knew that calculators were about accuracy--both numerically, the algorithms were specified and stable, and physically, the keys simply never made an error and had a positive physical feel when they engaged. I could enter long semiconductor device physics calculations into my HP48SX and not even look at the display. I would know that everything was entered correctly simply by feel. I can't even hope to do that on anything "modern".
- a_e_k 11y ago
  Yes, I've noticed their newer calculators now use the same style rubber or plastic keys as everyone else uses without that nice snap that the old had. I loved being able to key things in without looking. Also, the battery life was downright astonishing. I recall going most of a year on a set of three AAAs. These days I tend to use the Droid48 emulator (one of my favorite apps) on my Android. It lacks the tactile feel, obviously, but makes up for it by being always in my pocket -- similar to phone cameras vs. good dedicated cameras.
- RogerL 11y ago
  Yes, sometimes the keys on my new 12 sometimes don't register at all. The enter key is the biggest culprit, of all things. Never again. Meanwhile my 41cv from 1982 is still going strong.
- falcrist 11y ago
  In the 80s and early 90s there were scientific calculators that were programmable and had substantially more functionality built in than the current batch of scientific calculators. If you want illustrations of this, compare the HP 42s to the TI 36X Pro. Granted, the HP was more expensive than the TI, but the 36 series is the top of the line for TI at this point. The TI can do integration, complex arithmetic, vectors, and matrices. However, most of it's functions don't work in the complex domain, and the matrices are limited to 3×3. It has a solver, but that's limited. It can't store equations or programs. The HP can also do integration, complex arithmetic, vectors, and matrices. Almost all of its functions work in the complex domain (complex matrices are particularly useful). It has a versatile solver, works with matrices of over 10 elements, and can even store user programs (with GUI elements!). My theory on what happened is that normal desktop computers became powerful enough to run mathematical software packages, and graphing calculators became popular. Those two things dis-incentivized calculator manufacturers from creating powerful scientific calculators that could ACTUALLY fit in a pocket. The calculator now exists just for highschool students, which is a shame, because it would be really nice to have a powerful scientific with nice buttons. Maybe someone will build a calculator that also serves as an interface with a mathematics package… maybe even with "cloud" computing capabilities (where it runs the software package on your computer to do non-trivial things.
  - jarfil 11y ago
    It seems to me like the main thing about a physical calculator would be the physical keys. Would it make sense then to have a Bluetooth "calculator" keyboard linked to a smartphone?
    - falcrist 11y ago
      I'd rather see a wifi enabled calculator that can interact with various software packages (either acting as a mobile interface, or using a desktop/server to offload heavy calculations).
- hga 11y ago
  Bingo. I recently declined to buy a 16c revival in miniature form because it had membrane buttons that were reported to be flaky (sure wish I'd bought one when they were generally available, not exactly cheap on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/hp-16c-calculator http://www.ebay.com/bhp/hp-16c-calculator). I'm still using the 28S I bought back in the late '80s (also bought a spare recently), it does what I need, displays four levels of the stack, and between the quality buttons and discipline in double checking the stack before doing operations I never made a calculation error in my problem sets. Any keying error were due to hitting the wrong key, not the keys themselves.
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    I use a 35s, which replaced my 11c. It's available for around $50 new and is better than the 11c in every way except battery life (I think I had to change my batteries about once a decade with the 11, it was ridiculous). Unfortunately it only shows 2 levels of stack, not 4 like the 28s.
    - hga 11y ago
      Well, the 2 extra lines come from the 28s being a graphing calculator, they're essentially free. They're nice, but having gone from 1 line in an 67 to 4 in the 28s, I'm pretty sure the important threshold is "more than 1 line". On the other hand, I wouldn't want to switch to a 35s because I read it has a stack of only 4 levels. I find it very useful for summing a long list of numbers to key them all in, and then double check against the list as I do each addition. Hmmm, it's also easier to keep track of where you are in that process with an extra 2 visible lines.
      - aidenn0 11y ago
        oh, I didn't know the 28s had more than 4 registers; that's nice. I have no idea why they didn't do this in the 35s.
harperlee 11y ago
If you want to pass the Chartered Financial Analyst exams, you need a calculator. Only two models are allowed; this is one of them. That might be driving the price up!

Zombieball 11y ago

HP should revive the 16c! Given they still produce the 12c I imagine it would be quite simple to do. Maybe I am crazy but I've always felt there is still a strong demand for the 16c (but who knows given they did make the decision to halt production).

bsder 11y ago

In fact, calculator design seems to have gone backward. The HP48 was an amazing calculator for engineers. It often sells on Ebay for more than HP's current highest-end calculators do brand new. The problem is that HP's calculator division originally knew that calculators were about accuracy--both numerically, the algorithms were specified and stable, and physically, the keys simply never made an error and had a positive physical feel when they engaged. I could enter long semiconductor device physics calculations into my HP48SX and not even look at the display. I would know that everything was entered correctly simply by feel. I can't even hope to do that on anything "modern".

a_e_k 11y ago
Yes, I've noticed their newer calculators now use the same style rubber or plastic keys as everyone else uses without that nice snap that the old had. I loved being able to key things in without looking. Also, the battery life was downright astonishing. I recall going most of a year on a set of three AAAs. These days I tend to use the Droid48 emulator (one of my favorite apps) on my Android. It lacks the tactile feel, obviously, but makes up for it by being always in my pocket -- similar to phone cameras vs. good dedicated cameras.
RogerL 11y ago
Yes, sometimes the keys on my new 12 sometimes don't register at all. The enter key is the biggest culprit, of all things. Never again. Meanwhile my 41cv from 1982 is still going strong.
falcrist 11y ago
In the 80s and early 90s there were scientific calculators that were programmable and had substantially more functionality built in than the current batch of scientific calculators. If you want illustrations of this, compare the HP 42s to the TI 36X Pro. Granted, the HP was more expensive than the TI, but the 36 series is the top of the line for TI at this point. The TI can do integration, complex arithmetic, vectors, and matrices. However, most of it's functions don't work in the complex domain, and the matrices are limited to 3×3. It has a solver, but that's limited. It can't store equations or programs. The HP can also do integration, complex arithmetic, vectors, and matrices. Almost all of its functions work in the complex domain (complex matrices are particularly useful). It has a versatile solver, works with matrices of over 10 elements, and can even store user programs (with GUI elements!). My theory on what happened is that normal desktop computers became powerful enough to run mathematical software packages, and graphing calculators became popular. Those two things dis-incentivized calculator manufacturers from creating powerful scientific calculators that could ACTUALLY fit in a pocket. The calculator now exists just for highschool students, which is a shame, because it would be really nice to have a powerful scientific with nice buttons. Maybe someone will build a calculator that also serves as an interface with a mathematics package… maybe even with "cloud" computing capabilities (where it runs the software package on your computer to do non-trivial things.
- jarfil 11y ago
  It seems to me like the main thing about a physical calculator would be the physical keys. Would it make sense then to have a Bluetooth "calculator" keyboard linked to a smartphone?
  - falcrist 11y ago
    I'd rather see a wifi enabled calculator that can interact with various software packages (either acting as a mobile interface, or using a desktop/server to offload heavy calculations).
hga 11y ago
Bingo. I recently declined to buy a 16c revival in miniature form because it had membrane buttons that were reported to be flaky (sure wish I'd bought one when they were generally available, not exactly cheap on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/hp-16c-calculator http://www.ebay.com/bhp/hp-16c-calculator). I'm still using the 28S I bought back in the late '80s (also bought a spare recently), it does what I need, displays four levels of the stack, and between the quality buttons and discipline in double checking the stack before doing operations I never made a calculation error in my problem sets. Any keying error were due to hitting the wrong key, not the keys themselves.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  I use a 35s, which replaced my 11c. It's available for around $50 new and is better than the 11c in every way except battery life (I think I had to change my batteries about once a decade with the 11, it was ridiculous). Unfortunately it only shows 2 levels of stack, not 4 like the 28s.
  - hga 11y ago
    Well, the 2 extra lines come from the 28s being a graphing calculator, they're essentially free. They're nice, but having gone from 1 line in an 67 to 4 in the 28s, I'm pretty sure the important threshold is "more than 1 line". On the other hand, I wouldn't want to switch to a 35s because I read it has a stack of only 4 levels. I find it very useful for summing a long list of numbers to key them all in, and then double check against the list as I do each addition. Hmmm, it's also easier to keep track of where you are in that process with an extra 2 visible lines.
    - aidenn0 11y ago
      oh, I didn't know the 28s had more than 4 registers; that's nice. I have no idea why they didn't do this in the 35s.

harperlee 11y ago

If you want to pass the Chartered Financial Analyst exams, you need a calculator. Only two models are allowed; this is one of them. That might be driving the price up!