Remoticon 2021 // Rob Weinstein Builds an HP-35 from the Patent Up

Fifty years ago, Hewlett-Packard introduced the first handheld scientific calculator, the HP-35. It was quite the engineering feat, since equivalent machines of the day were bulky desktop affairs, if not …read more Continue reading Remoticon 2021 // Rob Weinstein Builds an HP-35 from the Patent Up

1973: When Calculators Were Built Like Computers

Should you ever pick up [Steve Wozniak]’s autobiography, you will learn that in the early 1970s when his friend [Steve Jobs] was working for Atari, [Woz] was designing calculators for Hewlett Packard. It seems scarcely believable today, but he describes his excitement at the prospects for the calculator business, admitting that he almost missed out on the emerging microcomputer scene that would make him famous. Calculators in the very early 1970s were genuinely exciting, and were expensive and desirable consumer items.

[Amen] has a calculator from that period, a Prinztronic Micro, and he’s subjected it to an interesting teardown. Inside …read more

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