25 Aug
2011
25 Aug
'11
11:25 a.m.
No mention whatsoever of HP? I graduated high school with a bunch of kids
who had 48's, and that was only a few years after they came out. It was fun
to watch teachers try to figure them out (except for a math teacher with the
masters in CS - he used a 16C of course.)
This reminds me of a true story that happened when I was studying at
Bristol. A member of stafff walked into the lab where I was working nd
asked 'Does anyone have a calculator?;. Without thinking I puleld my
HP48SX out of my pocket and handed it to him. His reply was priceless :
'At last. I've been all over this building looking for a calculator I can
acutall use.' ;-). I then ended upwit hthe job of repairing his
calculator (an old HP45 with battery and on/off switch problems that did
not take long to put right).
Also, Sharp and Casio make relatively popular graphing calculators. Casio
has had a color graphing model for several years now.
My objection to Casio machines (other htan they're not RPN, of course) is
that they are very 'modal'. There's a complex number mode, a matrix mode,
and so on. Probably ideal for schools ('Today we're going to be doing
matrices'), absolutley useless in the real world where you ogtne need ot
use matricies, complex numbers, etrc, in the same problem.
desktop calculators. I think Sharp has been selling
the same printing
calculator with the same green LED readout for nearly 20 years.
I believe the HP12C financial calculator has been sold (admitedly with
updates, but no real change that the user would see) for 30 years now.
-tony