From those of us who've been around for awhile, this is amazing...

[dgallup]

Got my first HP calculator for high school graduation in 1974. One of my older class mates was home from college in Dec 1973 and showed me his HP-35. I'd had some exposure to big clunky plug-in standard arithmetic calculators before that and the beauty of RPN logic was like a light bulb going off. I've never used anything else since. I love that we have slick emulators for PC's now that eliminate the need for physical ones but I still have an HP-15C, I consider it the absolute pinnacle of calculator design. The later much bulkier ones with graphing displays added far too much complexity & mass, making them inferior for most of my day to day needs. I had an HP-48G for a few years, sold it.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[electricpete]

In 1989 I attended "Bettis Reactor Engineering School" where the final project was to "design" a nuclear plant based on iterative numeric calculations of numerous variables to find an "optimum". We were nowhere smart enough to design a nuclear reactor plant, but this was a simplified version where the equations and constraints were plainly laid out and it essentially was just a massive numeric optimization problem. The required computing tool was an HP-41CV programmable calculator, when by that time there were plenty of PC's and everyone knew PC was much better suited to the task. We could program in parts of it but there was inevitably lots of manual steps like table lookups required as part of the calculation, and I spent way too many hours punching those keys and grew very disillusioned with that process. But later when I got my first android phone I found that previous negative experience turned useful and helped me more easily understand the HP-48GX programmable calculator (more advanced cousin of the 41CV) which was easily accessible by emulator on modern smart phones. I've gone on about that before so I won't repeat it, but that emulator app has been very useful to me.

As I recall the cost of that HP41CV back in 1989 was $150 and it had something like 4k memory. For kicks I googled it today, and the current cost for a used one is $395!!??!! I get that the cost is inflated because supply is limited, but who the heck is gonna pay $395 for that ancient thing?!? I guess there must be some sentimental collectors out there. Now I'm wondering what I did with my old HP41CV... I know I didn't sell it. Either I tossed it in the garbage, or else I might have something valuable hiding in my storage boxes somewhere.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[Pud]

Many years ago I was involved in closing a plant and moving the production facility.
At a meeting our IT guy said he had a quote for the mainframe of £500.
Our boss said that's not bad. Then the IT guy said that was the cost of taking it away!

H


Politicians like to panic, they need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.