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The Handheld Calculator Turns 40
Ian Lamont writes "The handheld calculator turns 40 years old this year, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has officially added to its collection examples of the first two programmable calculators, the TI-58 and TI-59. The museum already has the original 1967 'Cal-Tech' prototype, which weighs three pounds. At a ceremony at the Smithsonian yesterday, Jerry Merryman, one of the members of the TI team which developed the calculator, said that the project was started without a set budget and was something that 'we did in our spare time.' Antique calculators have a devoted following; news of a contest celebrating the 35th anniversary of the HP-35 slide rule calculator brought hundreds of fans out of the woodwork to reminisce about the pros and cons of various 70s' era calculators. There are a lot of Web resources devoted to these devices, including the Old Calculators Web Museum, where you can see pictures of everything from the Bohn Contex Model 10 Mechanical Calculator ('apparently the design of the machine caught the attention of the Soviets') to TI's first scientific calculator, the SR-20 ('keyboards were prone to bounce even when new')."
40 years and I still can't find one with a backlight. I can't be the only one who codes in a dimly lit cave.
In the early Seventies there was a calculator advertising jingle that was so stupid it has stayed with me for all these years: You can't go wrong with Rockwell, They're really such a treat. They've got BIG GREEN NUMBERS, And little rubber feet.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Was gonna say i thought my TI-55 was the first (it just wasn't useful as one) but the article ACTUALLY says: the Smithsonian expanded its collection to include two of the first programmable calculators, the TI-58 and TI-59.
:(
Two of the first != the first two
I bet someone did better on math SAT than verbal....
I still use both my TI-55 and TI-30. Had to hack the TI-55 to use a regular battery after the second nicad died. Recently bought one on ebay to try and restore mine but the battery pack wasn't rebuildable
You could squeeze cheat sheets into those things, too, though the memory was a bit limited...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
And they played music on your AM radio - that's multitasking for you!
When my family and I were leaving Japan for good (we'd lived there on a military base) in 1990, we were at the airport, trading in all of our Yen for Dollars on the way out. The currency exchange was this little kiosk about the size of one of those old drive-thru film processing booths. Inside sat an old man and a bunch of money and counting machines.
We gave him all our Yen, change, etc... he poured the change into one hole, the bills stacked and sorted into some other machine, and out came a paper receipt, like an atm receipt. he counted the dollars, to make sure it matched the receipt.
Before he handed over the money, though, he took out his soroban (Japanese abacus, slightly different bead layout, but same idea) and checked the math of the computer on it. Then he handed us our money.
The first programmable hand-held calculator was Hewlett Packard's HP-65. The SR-52 came a year later. HP then brought out the HP-67, and TI followed a year later with the TI-59. HP then came out with the HP-41 handheld programmable with slots for adding interfaces including HP-IL allowing the calc to handle all kinds of control and data-collections chores in labs. TI followed suit with the TI-88 the following year. I mean the year after that. No, it was the next year. The year after? As a matter of fact, TI never did come out with competition for the HP-41.
But there is no doubt that the first programmable handheld was the HP-65. If they don't have that in their collection then they ain't got the first.
I don't think the museum is complete until they mention the TI-8X series. It dominated the school sectors and did fractions! And the fraction results didn't come out to decimals, which makes it museum-worthy.
55318008 is better.
5318008
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
TI sorta dominates the high school graphing calculator business. Their current flagship (the TI-84+) hasn't changed drastically from the 81, but their next in line (the Nspire) is completely from scratch (but I'll keep my RPN thank-you-very-much)
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
The HP50g, TI89, and TI-Nspire CAS all have CAS systems (though the basic form factor is mostly the same as their 48g, 84+ and Nspire kin)
PS: I reccomend the 50g myself. It's definitley a bit on the advanced end (and has RPN as an option, which is what attracted me to HPs in the first place), but shouldn't be a problem for you judging by your homepage URL
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Curt Herzstark designed the Curta handheld calculator while he was a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Upon release in 1945, he started a company to manufacture these mechanical handheld calculators.
... he designed it to be handheld. The main cylinder fits within the hand, and the input sliders were made to be set by fingers. In a foreshadowing of computer architecture, he used complimentary arithmetic to do both subtraction and addition.
Herzstark recognized the importance of user interface
Although crank-driven, a Curta is surprisingly fast at the basic four functions. This is because you can rotate the output register to do automatic multiplies by powers of ten.
Made in Lichtenstein, the Curtas were superbly machined, with a feel comparable to a high quality Nikon F camera.
His peppermill calculators were sold from 1947 until 1972; today, they're mostly collectors items. But I use one to run my Klein Bottle business.
must... stay... awake...
As none of the links in the article actually seem to link to a description/picture of the device, here is one for your enjoyment:
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/texas_insturments_ti_58.html
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
> ... officially added to its collection examples of the first two
> programmable calculators, the TI-58 and TI-59.
Hm. The HP-65 came out in '74, the TI-58 and TI-57 in '77.
I had a TI-57 but I also had a programmable calculator one before that, a NatSemi Scientific-PR, which was a '75 machine, AFAIK.
The TI-58 and 59 are *not* the first programmable calculators by a long shot.
My dad was the first in his office to get an RPN HP calculator (aeronautical engineer). Showed it off to everyone, real proud of it, etc.
Week later he was back to using a triple slide rule... I had taken apart his precious, at the age of three.
A month of talking with apps engineers at HP and they sent him a bag of spare parts along with an exploded diagram (for free) and he was able to re-assemble the thing. Still works, and he still has it. I am still not allowed to touch it (nearly 30 years later).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I was at T.I. as a calculator design Engineer from 1972 until late 1975 before moving over to the corporate research lab to work on magnetic bubble memories. I worked on several different scientific and business models and was the project engineer for the rare TI-150, the only handheld model to use a plasma (neon) display. I still have one of the prototypes here at my desk in good working condition. I did parts of the electrical design of the magnetic card readers for the SR-52 and SR-60 as well as parts of the main board design for the latter. All that and lots of work on other models, too. Fun projects, good people to work with and fond memories. If any of my old co-workers from that time are reading this, you can get in touch via the web site my nickname links to.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Hewlet-Packard keeps selling RPN calculators, such as HP-33s or HP-35s...
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