10 ms·
The HP-35: Consumer Electronics, an Origin Story
- pjmorris 8y agoHow can you not love this: > HP typically priced their equipment at the cost of the material list × π (or in an especially competitive market, list × e)
- Lio 8y agoThe founders of HP were just so much cooler than the business school goons like Fiorina who practically drove it into the ground. That pricing formula is so playful, as is "well I want one and so do my engineers". Chapeau Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.
- madengr 8y agoHa ha, practically? She did. Keysight is what’s left of the original HP. HP is now known for garbage computers and shitty printers.
- dfox 8y agoAnd the ironic part of that is that the original HP was spun-off two times (at first Agilent, then Keysight).
- chx 8y agoAnd calculators...?
- madengr 8y agoThe new calculators are abominations, with the exception of the 35s. I use those at work, so I didn’t have to break the seal on a 32Sii; the precious.
- qubex 8y agoI have an HP Prime. I use it daily. It’s CAS isn’t exactly Mathematica-grade but it’s perfectly adequate for my daily purposes.
- Splines 8y agoI feel that they're getting their legs back under their consumer division, although I agree their laptops have been really mediocre. However I have enjoyed using their enterprise workstations for the last 10 years are so (various models of Z4xx's) and haven't had any complaints.
- linker3000 8y agoThe Bestec PSUs were often the weakest link - and a non-standard size (and wiring ISTR) so you couldn't replace them with just anything.
- Multicomp 8y agoI've had good experiences with their EliteBook lines. Solid machines, if you are closer to the rugged notebook vs thin trophy book on the scale of laptop thickness.
- madengr 8y agoThey try forcing the Z series on me at work. I have bought Microway workstations. Much better bang for the buck, and better build quality.
- dfox 8y agoOTOH, if you are engineer faced with the problem of picking some number between the respective economical constraints (ie. pick a number not much higher than 2.25 or not much higher than 3, both of which are somewhat well known estimates of manufacturing overhead) you are somewhat likely to come up with these two transcendentals.
- eitally 8y agoAt most hardware companies, this is the starting point. As in, a flat multiple is the baseline, before S&M and other overheard costs are re-integrated by Finance into product cost.
- dboreham 8y agoIndeed. Same thing when I was a hardware engineer. However, I think the GP loves it due to the use of Pi and 'e' as the constants. We used 3 I seem to remember, but we included some amount for assembly and test, which I bet would come close to Pi.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoA neighbor gave us one when he moved up to an HP-25 (lower number, but a later and better calculator). I used it in college. I remember running across campus on my way to a chemistry test, playing catch with my calculator (in the padded case) as I ran. I had confidence that, even if I dropped it, it would still work.
- Gargoyle 8y agoI accidentally sat on my HP-15C in college and broke the LCD. I wrote to HP to see where I could get the LCD replaced. I was a college student and the thing was like $125 1986 dollars, I wanted to fix it, not buy a new one. They just sent me a new calculator for free. I was so amazed! Heh. I repeated almost the same accident with an early kindle and Amazon did the same free replacement. I don't think they do today.
- fermienrico 8y agoUnfortunately, consumer electronics are not the same as the days of Braun. 70’s was the golden era. I was extremely pleased with my DM42 from SwissMicros. All of their models either have a Titanium or Steel case. The heft and quality is just absolutely beautiful. I spoke to Michael Steinmann and he seems to be a great guy passionate about what he does. I enjoyed our conversation about old school electronics. Check out https://SwissMicros.com https://SwissMicros.com
- poyu 8y agoThanks for SwissMicros link! Never heard of them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- falcon620 8y agoThis image from their website is one of the sexiest product photos I've ever seen: https://www.swissmicros.com/photos_feb2016/kuble/DM15_creditcard.png https://www.swissmicros.com/photos_feb2016/kuble/DM15_credit...
- FullyFunctional 8y agoINTERESTING, thanks for sharing. Please, how is the keyboard? To me, more than anything, what made the HP calc fantastic was the great keyboard - which really matters when you start using them in anger. My HP-15C survived all but the last of many drops. The HP-11C that replaced it still powers on on its original batteries!
- madengr 8y agoI dropped my 32Sii from 3 stories onto concrete. It was scuffed but fine. I have 4 of the 32Sii unopened in clamshell.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 8y agoIt really is hard to over state the impact that scientific calculators had on industry. My great uncle who was an engineer at the Panama Canal company had log tables, these were tables of logarithmic values given a number, and the inverse. He needed the heavy tome because he couldn't get enough digits of precision out of his slide rule. He was one of those people who immediately bought an HP-35 when it came out and was thrilled. My parents bought me the TI SR-52 when it came out and it was the coolest thing I could imagine. I wore the numbers off the keycaps on that thing.
- analog31 8y agoI have my dad's slide rule, and his HP-35. He's a retired industrial research scientist. At my dad's workplace, every scientist had a Friden 55. The managers compared the price of the HP to the annual service contract on the Friden, and bought an HP to try out. They were going to let each scientist have it for a week, then pass it on to the next person. Instead, after just a couple weeks, the Fridens were all in the dumpster.
- exikyut 8y agoAwesome. It's proving a little tricky to find a picture and/or more info about the Friden 55. All I'm getting is other models. Was it mechanical? (Hopefully some of them ended up in attics, they sound mildly interesting even if just from a historical-interest retrospective standpoint)
- analog31 8y agoAha, I found more hits when I entered "Friden STW." I don't know where I got the "55" from. http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_690862 http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah... It's fully mechanical and can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I saw one of these things work, and it was quite an experience. There's a YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKm9eM2BuM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKm9eM2BuM0 And a few people have published images of the service manual. My dad said that while the Friden was accurate, it was not portable or quick, and he usually used his slide rule, notebook, and graph paper. For a chemist, slide rule accuracy was usually sufficient.
- poyu 8y agoI really really like HP calculators. The only one I have now is the HP-35s, a new version of HP-35. Once you go RPN, you can never go back! I have PCalc (another piece of amazing software) on my phone for RPN. It feels really stupid for others to see that I can't operate a normal calculator.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- madengr 8y agoYeah, PCalc is the best one out there, but still no substitute for a real one. I can’t bring my phone into work, so still heavily rely on the real ones. My ultimate one would be some sort of OLED display for each key, so they could be programmed. There still isn’t one yet that has my ideal key layout.
- EarthIsHome 8y agoI love the HP-35s. Having common conversions at the press of a button is really convenient. Here's the buglist for the HP-35s: http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cgi?read=735 http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cg...
- Hextinium 8y agoI highly recommend anyone to convert to RPN but it does make you feel like a idiot when you can't use a normal calculator for the minute it takes to switch back over to normal. I find it doubly frustrating though to use a normal one because I know now the forbidden fruit of how calculators can be improved and college sometimes prevents me from using it.
- setquk 8y agoAs someone who switched away from RPN (well RPL) I disagree. I was an HP48/50 series fanboy since about 1995 and before that RPN on a HP41. I was the weird kid at school who didn’t have a normal calculator and the teachers couldn’t help me. However I bought a Casio FX991EX recently after using my daughter’s unit which has a modern entry system, solver, engineering units, conversions and dual power. It’s pretty much perfect. Anything else more complicated, I roll out python, scipy, sympy etc.
- MikeGale 8y agoOh yea. Those were the days those were. HP 21, 29C, 41CX. Great introduction to computing.
- teraflop 8y agoAn anecdote about the HP-35, from the HP Museum (http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp35.htm http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp35.htm): > The HP-35 had numerical algorithms that exceeded the precision of most mainframe computers at the time. [...] This forced time-consuming manual comparisons of results to mathematical tables. A few bugs got through this process. For example: 2.02 ln e^x resulted in 2 rather than 2.02. When the bug was discovered, HP had already sold 25,000 units which was a huge volume for the company. In a meeting, Dave Packard asked what they were going to do about the units already in the field and someone in the crowd said "Don't tell?" At this Packard's pencil snapped and he said: "Who said that? We're going to tell everyone and offer them, a replacement. It would be better to never make a dime of profit than to have a product out there with a problem". It turns out that less than a quarter of the units were returned. Most people preferred to keep their buggy calculator and the notice from HP offering the replacement. And here is a scan of that recall notice: https://imgur.com/K1k0cSQ https://imgur.com/K1k0cSQ (original source: http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-2821.html http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-2821.html)
- jacquesm 8y agoThat letter should be required reading and the anecdote further cements the 'fish rots from the head' proverb as accurate. After all, without ethics at the top there is no corrective action against such relatively minor nudges in the wrong direction and over time that will accumulate until you get a completely different version of the company. One that will never ever have the kind of stature that HP enjoyed.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoOh, how things have changed. In fact reading the whole article made me wish for a return to a time where people took this much pride in what they made.
- gcb0 8y ago> battery for 3 hours Wow. How often people would replace batteries on this?
- kps 8y agoAbout as often as people today replace batteries on their phones.
- dfox 8y agoTo add some context: essentially all scientific calculators with LED or VFD displays had rechargable NiCd batteries and plug packs. Typical engineer mostly used them plugged into wall. (And then there was my dad who used his IIRC Sharp VFD scientific calculator as charger for AA NiCd cells well into late 90's)
- opencl 8y agoIt uses a pack of rechargable AAs, I have an HP-45 (the immediate successor, with the same battery pack) and replaced the original NiCD cells with NiMH. When I got it the batteries were clearly already a few decades old. AAs NiCDs were pretty common back then, I have an old TI and Soviet-made Electronika calculator that also use them.
- ghaff 8y agoRight. It mostly wasn't a problem so long as you remembered to charge them before exams, etc. In college, I'd still bring a slide rule to final exams as backup just in case something happened although I never had a problem. I started college just as scientific calculators were appearing on the scene. I had a TO for a couple of years because the HPs were still so expensive but I was able to pickup an HP-55 after a bit for a relatively affordable price (still probably talking about high 3 digits in today's dollars). That's what I used until I bought an HP-41CV when I went back to school and needed a more programmable calculator.
- eltoozero 8y ago100K units in the first year, vs your king of consumer electronics today: the iPhone, which pre-sells and ships 100K units in what, several minutes? I understand not everyone buys calculators, but that’s sort of the point of the article that this was marketed as a ‘consumer’ electronics product rather than scientific equipment. Also there’s much less friction and much more marketing today, but it’s wild to imagine how millions of iPhones ‘move’ in a single weekend, every year for nearly the last decade and what is required to keep supply in pace with demand.
- jacquesm 8y agoThat's Moore's law in action over the longer term. A device like the iPad back when the HP-35 was introduced would have been (1) impossible to make and (2) would have cost millions of $ given the number of transistors in the device (besides the fact that the internet is what makes an iPad useful). You really can't compare those numbers, yes, the HP was a consumer device, but the manufacturer of any consumer device back then would have been happy to sell in those numbers. The good news is now it can be yours for under $2 if you already have an iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rpn-35-sd/id956224485?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rpn-35-sd/id956224485?mt=8
- gcb0 8y ago> HP’s own LEDs [...] the calculator needed 15 of them > Osborne was able to get the price down to a dollar each > HP typically priced their equipment at the cost of the material list × π [...] the LED display around 20 dollars uh?
- gyc 8y agoWhat an interesting story. My dad had an HP-35 that he used as a grad student at Stanford in the 70s, and he handed it down to me decades later for me to use in my high school math classes.
- wyclif 8y agoWhile I am definitely fond of the HP-35 in a nostalgic sense, my real-life working calculator was the HP-48GX when I became a land surveyor. I added a COGO card that would calculate pavement design, storm water pipe modelling, and the area of a polygon after the coordinates of each point were given. And away I went. There wasn't much I couldn't do with that, graphing or calc-wise. Made my job so much easier in the field. When they killed the HP-48GX, and replaced it with inferior models, it was a dark day in land surveying.
- jwr 8y agoThe HP-48G/GX was also my calculator of choice and I really disliked the later HP49. However, I then tried the HP50G, and was instantly hooked. Once you get over the differences in key layout, it's like a HP-48GX loaded with tons of useful software, in a slightly better form factor. I now have a HP50G and a HP-48G, but I never use the older model. On iOS, I use the Emu50G app, which works, but could really use some improvements and optimizations. It's a fork of emu48. Incidentally, I think the HP-50G is the last good engineering calculator. I'm puzzled as to how people get around without one these days: don't tell me about python, scipy and other similar shells: there is nothing else out there that can do so much, so efficiently.
- vq 8y agoHave you tried Calc? It's loosely modelled after the HP-calculators and it's my first choice of calculator when I have a full blown computer at my hands. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.html#What-is-Calc https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.htm...
- FractalLP 8y agoVoyage-200 on the TI side was great. A TI-89 with more RAM and horizontal full qwerty keyboard. A monster size wise, but I loved that thing.
- chx 8y agoI bought a HP-42S in West Germany in 1989, my first trip to the West when I was 14 (I was Hungarian at the time, now that's fixed, I am Canadian). Oh the memories. Later, 1995, I got a HP 48G via Usenet (eBay opened the month when it arrived from the USA so it's not like I could've bought it there). A friend of mine have soldered four 128K SRAMs in there, stacked, with most legs just ran together vertically with the few data legs separated. Dave Arnett himself told us it's possible to change a G into a GX... https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.hp48/CS0lTpKkBHw/vnJh61RXJpoJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.hp48/CS0lTpKkBHw/vn... I still have it although I do not use it, it's one of the very few things I carried over when I immigrated. Ps. Isn't the Internet fantastic? The easy communication with people you'd never be able to connect with otherwise and the astonishing archives allowing me to dig this 23 year old conversation up with ease.
- wyclif 8y agoThe HP-48Gx models always had interesting cards and mods.
- joezydeco 8y agoI'm a proud 42S owner as well. I keep it safe in a drawer and use the Free42 build on iOS in my pocket: http://thomasokken.nl/free42/ http://thomasokken.nl/free42/
- e3pi 8y agoI've a SKB case filled with HP calculators. It is your android FREE 42s I pack in the kit. Other than 3-D just-so HP's haptic double-injected keys, it's fantastic! Thank you Thomas for your phenomenal RPN gift to humankind!
- sytelus 8y agowow... what an amazing article. Few interesting bits... - HP was offering so many products that it took a four-pound, nearly 600-page catalog to describe them all. - In what has to be one of the most famous design briefs in electronics history, Bill Hewlett asked Osborne and Cochran to shrink the 9100. “I want it to be a tenth of the volume, ten times as fast and cost a tenth as much.” - At the time it seemed like an impossible request, but Hewlett didn’t let the idea go. Cochran, who for a time lived across the street from Hewlett, would occasionally give him a ride to work. - It soon became clear that the entire project was going to cost around a million dollars. - Stanford Research Institute did market survey and their conclusion was clear: “we don’t recommend that you go ahead with this.” - Hewlett, despite the SRI report, decided he wanted one and thought his engineers should have one as well. - For the log and exponential functions they used pseudo division and multiplication algorithms from Briggs’ 1624 Arithmetica Logarithmica. For the transcendental functions they used Volder’s CORDIC algorithm, originally developed for B-58 navigation. - It took them more than a little finessing to fit everything into the 5140 bits (or 0.6 K). - First industrial design featuring angled the display, a textured case, rubber feet serve as battery compartment latches. - The entire project took 14 months, half of HP’s typical design cycle. - Hewlett said the name would be the HP-35, after the device’s 35 keys. HP’s computerized inventory system only recognized four-digit names - HP typically priced their equipment at the cost of the material list × π (or in an especially competitive market, list × e) - “We [had to worry about] sales per square foot on the first floor of Macy’s, vs. the second floor.” - HP-35 “[was] something only fictional heroes like James Bond, Walter Mitty or Dick Tracy are supposed to own,” a device that Captain Kirk of Star Trek was supposed to own. - climbers carried to the top of Everest to do altitude calculations; Apollo astronauts used it in space to calculate re-entry coordinates - In all, 100,000 HP-35’s (or more than 10× their estimate) were sold in the first year—accounting for more than half of the company’s total profits It's amazing the similarity between HP and Apple's success stories. And then the fact that Steve Jobs bought the property that summer and the site is now part of Apple’s new Pentagon-sized spaceship headquarters. I think pretty much every thing you need to know why companies succeed and fail is in this story.
- jdblair 8y agoI love this: HP typically priced their equipment at the cost of the material list × π (or in an especially competitive market, list × e)...
- submeta 8y agoOh, how I love old HP calculators. My HP 28s is 30 years old and still working great. - I learned programming in a Forth like language (stack based) with it. And it inspired me to learn Scheme and the Mathematica language. Love it. Although these days I rather use a version for my iPhone (HCalc)
- pletnes 8y agoAmazing. I got a HP30s in 2003 as it was the only calculator approved by the university. Everybody I knew hated every single aspect of it. The arrow button was soft and imprecise, leading to long calculations being deleted by accident. The display was too short for longer expressions (compared to the competition). The display scratched easily. The buttons were round and didn’t give good tactical feedback. My jaw dropped when I started working in industry and people would guard jealously their ancient HP calculators with nice clicky buttons and crisp display. HP has come a long way - down.
- wscott 8y agoSome of these comments are "my first HP". I bought an HP-28C in when I graduated from high school using my own money. It was $235 which was a lot of money for me. My parents thought I was crazy. I later upgraded to the 28S followed by the 48sx. At college, I would enter and win the "Calculator Olympics". They would give you these super complicated algebraic expressions to evaluate. The TI people would lose track of all the parentheses and the older HPs would exceed the 4-level stack. I was amused a couple years ago to discover many of my old programs are still preserved on the internet: https://www.hpcalc.org/authors/166 https://www.hpcalc.org/authors/166 POLY was hugely popular at the time. I just wrote it to simplify my classwork.
- nealabq 8y agoMy father worked at HP in the 70s in Tool&Die, and made some of the molds for plastic pieces of the HP 35. He bought an HP 21 in '76. It's now my son's. It still works perfectly, except the battery is lost so we run a wire into the battery compartment. It's the most intuitive calculator I've ever used.
- eitally 8y agoWhen I was growing up in the early 80s, my engineer father had an HP-35 that he adored. He ultimately added an HP-12c, too, and when I was in middle school I was gifted an HP-32sii. I was the only weirdo using RPN. :) I upgraded to an HP-48g in high school when everyone else was using Ti-82. I can't really think of any other company or product line I've had such a longstanding relationship with. FWIW, I still have both of my HP calculators and they work great!
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoI'm in the age group that spans the end of the slide rule with the beginnings of calculators and personal computers. As a high school senior, trigonometry was the highest math class and we learned to use the slide rule in it. I still have the one my dad bought me for my birthday that year. In college freshman calculus, I remember one guy brought his HP-35 to class and everyone else being awed and amazed by it, including the professor. It was too expensive for me but I was able to buy a TI-50 the next year. Functional but it wasn't an HP.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]