4 ms·
I had one of these way back when, and loved it. This is a great article, and reading it might give younger folks an idea of why HP users from the 1900s loved t
by bluenose69 5y ago
I had one of these way back when, and loved it.
This is a great article, and reading it might give younger folks an idea of why HP users from the 1900s loved their calculators so much. They were designed for people who needed to get things done. And it wasn't just the algorithms inside. The physical machines were terrific, too. The pivoting keys left no doubt as to whether you had entered a digit (or whether, as in competitors' machines, the keystroke had entered the digit twice by mistake). And then there's RPN. Oh, lovely RPN -- trusty friend to those who needed correct answers and needed them in a rush.
Such elegance (of machines and writing) is rare nowadays.
Thanks for posting this, which brought back good memories.
- madengr 5y agoPeople from 2020 still love the too, ha ha. I have several 35s at work and just got a Swiss Micros DM42 from xmas. Then again, I'm 50 and used these all through EE school and my profession. I have four 32sii still sealed in clamshell package. Went out and bought a bunch years ago when they discontinued them. https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm42 https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm42
- icedchai 5y agoI had an HP48SX in high school, then upgraded to a 48G. I remember programming games on it.
- cyckl 5y agoi am in high school and the 48GX is undeniably the best calculator that i've ever had to use. unfortunately i don't have the serial cable for it so i can't load anything cool like metakernel i wish there was a modern alternative with the same simplicity :(
- mmcgaha 5y agoOne of my biggest regrets was passing up an offer to buy over 200 HP48 calculators back in the early 2000s. There was an independent book store across the street from a local tech school that had bought used 48s from students. There was one professor who required them for her class but she left and they could not move their inventory. They did have some black screen 48GX so I got those, but I should have picked up the whole lot.
- madengr 5y agoThey seem to be going for about $300 used, though considering inflation less than new. If you could have gotten a good deal, then you’d come out ahead. The price will only increase. I have a 48G and 48GX, and several others. I’d like to collect them all and build a nice display case to house them.
- mmcgaha 5y agoI have a display case in my office with mostly HP calculators. A few folks don't know what to think of it but I get bit of a kick out of their reaction. I love having them all in front of me to use and most importantly to remind me to remove the batteries.
- crazydoggers 5y agoMy HP 48 was a life saver from high school through college. Everything you said nailed it. I can still feel the press of those keys. Whenever I had to borrow or do something on a friends TI, I couldn’t stand it. The wobbly keys made typing all those parentheses even more of a nightmare!
- woolion 5y agoA friend introduced me to the HP-40G in high school, while everybody was using TI or Casio. Turns out these calculators can beep with a given frequency! So I learned (some of) the physics of sound to be able to program music. So it really pushed me to do more advanced maths and taught me programming, these are some fondly remembered days. The symbolic computation GUI is also a marvel of design that is unsurpassed to this day, especially in how you can select semantic blocks with a keyboard, and how good the rendering is. It felt like a human-centric interface rather than a computer-centric one. Although the general UI of the calculator was more of a confusing mess, so it had its flaws. Well, I got mine for cheap from another student who "bought this useless garbage" so it's not a universal point of view.
- jhgb 5y agoKeys set aside, one can now use Free42 on a phone to get a taste.