
The 1970s calculator race - prostoalex
https://twitter.com/pulplibrarian/status/1030830856720527360
======
United857
The article failed to mention possibly the most influential one of them all,
the Busicom. While it was an obscure Japanese company, they indirectly kicked
off the microprocessor revolution -- via another obscure company called Intel.

"Busicom asked Intel to design a set of integrated circuits for a new line of
programmable electronic calculators in 1969.[1][2] In doing this, they spurred
the invention of Intel's first microprocessor to be commercialized,[3] the
Intel 4004"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busicom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busicom)

~~~
incyclum
Intel shipped to its customer Busicom the first 4004 chips in 1971. But
because that year Busicom was in financial trouble they accepted that Intel
could resell the chips to others in exchange of lower prices. Commercial
success of the 4004 isn't present during the first few months and they didn't
patented their chip yet. Then it got better.

------
Scaevolus
Sinclair's 1974 Sinclair Scientific calculator was amazing:
[http://files.righto.com/calculator/sinclair_scientific_simul...](http://files.righto.com/calculator/sinclair_scientific_simulator.html)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302364)

They sold a scientific calculator with 12 functions using a chip designed for
4 function calculators with just 320 instructions of ROM!

~~~
jonsen
I remember testing various calculators with the sequence

    
    
      25 sin cos tan atan acos asin
    

to see how close they came back to 25 degrees.

The Sinclair showed 42 point something.

~~~
keithpeter
If I round each result to 6 significant figures and then use that as the input
for the next stage, my bog standard scientific calculator gives me 9.32631 for
the final answer.

(chained using full accuracy as sibling comment does give 25 of course).

Thinking about the curves of the functions near zero in the middle steps and a
few terms of the taylor series around those values suggests lots of accuracy
lost in rounding. We are spoiled with 16 sig fig these days...

~~~
Dylan16807
I think you entered a number wrong, since your calculator otherwise got the
right answer. None of these functions are going into particularly dangerous
areas for precision. When I round every step to 6 figures on my calculator, I
still get 24.9999

Heck, rounding every step to 2 figures still gets me .41 radians which is 23.5
degrees.

~~~
jonsen
I think he means rounding to 6 decimal places. If I do that I get 9.326312.

~~~
Dylan16807
I...how? That's the same on most of the numbers, but even more precision on
one of them.

Here's my calculator, with exactly three decimal places:

25->rad: .436

sin(.436): .422

cos(.422): .912

tan(.912): 1.292

atan(1.292): .912

acos(.912): .422

asin(.422): .435

.435->deg: 24.924

Where does your calculator start to diverge, that you end up with an answer
like 9?

And I got the same result as Aardwolf that the Sinclair emulator returns .434,
only a tenth of a degree off.

Edit: Oh wait, you're using a calculator set to degrees. That's a totally
different problem, because it makes the 0-1 output from sin and cos become an
extremely small fraction of a circle. It works as a type of precision test,
but it's not at all the same thing you'd try on the Sinclair that only does
radians. It still doesn't explain your original memory.

Side note: Even in degrees mode, the answer for 6 digits is kind of an
outlier. If you use 5 or fewer digits the calculation _crashes_. 7 digits gets
you 24.9. It boils down to just acos(cos( [about half a degree] )), and the
other operations don't really matter.

~~~
jonsen
_...but it 's not at all the same thing you'd try on the Sinclair that only
does radians._

Right. Apparently I wasn’t aware of that at the time. Nice to find out here on
HN some fourty years later :-)

------
owenversteeg
Vintage calculators are my hobby! It's a shame I only saw this thread when
it's 12 hours old. If anyone has any questions about them or would like to see
photos I'm happy to share.

The Twitter thread, while educational and cool, is a bit inaccurate/misleading
about a handful of things. A lot of the photos are of later models or
something unrelated to the tweet, and there were a lot more innovations not
talked about. Progress also did not happen as early as the tweets would
indicate.

Personally, one thing I love about old calculators is the craftsmanship. Each
one of the early ones was assembled by hand, and it shows - some of them are
true works of art.

~~~
ndesaulniers
Then you should post a blog or site to correct these mistakes and share your
hobby with the world.

~~~
opencl
There's already tons of sites about this stuff, probably hard to add much that
hasn't already been written about at this point. I did a bit of collecting
myself for a while but gave up when I both no longer needed calculators very
much anymore and the prices started getting ridiculously inflated.

[http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/calculator_time-
line....](http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/calculator_time-line.html) \-
similar timeline but goes back farther

[http://rskey.org/](http://rskey.org/) \- programmable calculators

[http://datamath.org/](http://datamath.org/) \- TI calculators

[http://www.hpmuseum.org/](http://www.hpmuseum.org/) \- HP calculators

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070528063100/http://www.tasweg...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070528063100/http://www.taswegian.com:80/MOSCOW/soviet.html)
\- Soviet calculators, original site sadly went down

[http://thimet.de/CalcCollection/index.html](http://thimet.de/CalcCollection/index.html)
\- huge collection that includes accuracy and performance testing (for
programmable models)

------
phs318u
Maybe it's a factor of my age, but I love these kind of 'walk down memory
lane' articles.

After my Dad passed away, I kept only a literal handful of things of his as
mementos. Of these was his TI-59 (from when he was studying electronic
engineering). It's the first 'computer' I ever used and wrote my very first
program on (a number guessing game). Still have a few mag-cards with 'lunar
lander' (turn-based, enter the thrust per iteration and see the resulting
height, velocity and fuel ... if I remember correctly). Haven't fired it up in
years. Might do so this afternoon :-)

Addendum: the Casio credit-card sized calculator? I soooo wanted one of those!

~~~
mb_72
I love them because it's a reminder of how I became interested in computers
and programming in the first place. 1980 -> '84 I lived in a country town in
South Australia (then the second-largest city, but still only around 30k
people); after school I waited for my parents to finish work in the library of
the government education centre, and quickly discovered copies of Byte
magazine. They had all the issues from the first in the 70s' to the then
'current day', and I can remember seeing all the adverts for very cool (or so
I thought) calculators and computers and hardware bits and pieces. My interest
became an obsession, and I cajoled my parents into buying a TRS80 Color
Computer in 1982, started typing BASIC programs into that machine, and haven't
stopped programming since.

These kind of articles restore, at least a little bit, the wonder and
excitement I felt at having interaction with these new amazing machines, and
make it a bit easier to deal with the next JS problem, or developing that new
Web API for a client.

------
themodelplumber
I love this nostalgia thing with the older calculators that's been going on
for a while now. Getting more current, does anybody else like to stroll down
the aisles checking out the current lineups of calculators at their local
office supply stores? I have a small collection now and really enjoy checking
out the latest Casio or TI models, and sometimes even the eye-catching store-
brand scientifics in various unique color schemes, and so on.

Looking for things to do with my calculators was one factor in making the
decision to become a licensed ham radio operator. I was kind of disappointed
in the end that the exams didn't end up requiring much calculator-math, but
anyway I'm kind of going back to school these days so to speak, getting a bit
more involved with mathematics as an avocation and definitely enjoying my
various calculators again after a long hiatus post-formal-education.

~~~
1996
About 10 years ago I found the Casio 9860 slim (clamshell) which can do RPN
with an addon, and integrated it to my desktop.

It is faster to grab it than firing off any piece of software, and easy to
take with me when having coffee and doing back of the enveloppe calculations

~~~
themodelplumber
> Casio 9860 slim (clamshell)

Wow, I really like the looks of that one! Nice. I agree on the convenience. I
usually have something around my desk like an fx-260 and it's really nice to
have handy.

~~~
1996
A pleasure to use. Runs on AAA batteries, backlit, and has a USB port to
transfer things back and forth

------
sizzzzlerz
For those of us in science/engineering path, the HP-35 was as lust inducing as
pretty coeds. To actually own one was to be both envied and hated. Not being
able to afford the $200 or so it took to buy one, I bought the much cheaper
TI-52. Turned out to be a great choice that carried me through my BSEE and
well into my first job until it was replaced with the programmable TI-59.
Unfortunately, being unable to envision there ever being a collectors market
for these things, I got rid of both of them.

~~~
3rdAccount
HP-15c is a work of art. I made it through college using the Voyage-200(souped
up TI-89).

------
DeepYogurt
For those that want a video overview; LGR has done an episode on this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_99646...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_996465115&feature=iv&src_vid=zoGl8-Wc-L0&v=g6jQVqkpjc8)

~~~
rwmj
And Techmoan (great channel) did a review of the HP calculator watch:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGQrsSEaZkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGQrsSEaZkI)

------
WilliamEdward
The fact that this entire article was written on twitter is more interesting
and remarkable to me than the actual content. Although they're both pretty
interesting.

------
nayuki
"Begin Japanology" has an episode on calculators. It contains a segment about
calculator product wars among Japanese manufacturers.
[https://youtu.be/1_GVkR0SITo?t=1050](https://youtu.be/1_GVkR0SITo?t=1050)

------
timonoko
Amazing fact: I have never owned a pocket calculator. I learned to use slide
rule in school and universities and stepped right into computer age around
1973. Hence I have had embarrassing moments, especially with those with Forth-
like operation.

------
0x445442
Not a year goes by I don’t kick myself for getting rid of my HP 28s. It wasn’t
from the same era as those in the article but damn, what a trusty work horse
it was for me in college.

------
e3pi
Free 42S is my favorite phone app. I've the original 42S manual PDF -- not
easy to find -- their `charity' pay-wall.

~35MB Download: original HP 42S 358pp manual: e3pi.org

I've many HP rpn's, Free 42S is better at everything, except keys haptic
satisfaction.

If you're voyager/landscape 10C 11C 12C 15C 16C centric, rotate phone:
rot90:HP-42S <\--> HP-42C

yes, ballistically-black ruggedized Otterbox-ed, cost $0.00.

------
keithnz
when I was a kid at school late 70s early 80s, calculators were the awesome
thing, this series of game calcs were the "THE" thing to have, especially 8
attack and boxing...
[http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~pinwhiz/cascalc.htm](http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~pinwhiz/cascalc.htm)

------
partycoder
A proficient abacus user can be faster than a proficient calculator user in
tasks involving addition and subtraction.

This is a motivation for abacus/calculator hybrids,
[http://retrocalculators.com/digicus.htm](http://retrocalculators.com/digicus.htm)

------
ChuckMcM
I cherished my SR-52 in high school. My parents got it for me for Christmas my
Junior year. I replaced it with a TI-59 (with magnetic cards!) in college. And
the top of the line for me was the 'landscape mode' TI-92+.

I sold the -52 and -59 at a garage sale one year but still have the 92+.

------
Sniffnoy
Non-mobile link:
[https://twitter.com/pulplibrarian/status/1030830856720527360](https://twitter.com/pulplibrarian/status/1030830856720527360)

------
rb808
Peak calculator for me was that Casio MG-880 with the space invaders game.
Many an hour of math homework was consumed with frantic tapping.

------
serversytem
This is pure gold. Calculators were what got me to choose Computer Science as
a career. I will be sure to save all the photos.

------
gumby
from the mid 70s to the mid 80s my parents had a "compact" calculator on their
desk at home (for the bills etc) that plugged into power -- no batteries. It
was about the size of a book, and sat on the desk next to the (wired, of
course) telephone. What a modern household!

------
duxup
Ah the Little Professor.

I don't think I ever used one growing up that wasn't a little bit sticky.

------
bluedino
Too hard to read this is Twitter format

------
sismoc
Twitter is the WRONG platform for this type of information.

~~~
sweden
It certainly is. I can't possibly fathom what goes on people's minds that
leads them to think Twitter is a great platform for information sharing.

It makes me sad that humanity gave up blogging for tweeting. I can't think of
a more unsuitable platform for making this kind of posts: it limits the number
of characters, the UI is awful for continuity of posts, the webpage is really
heavy since it loads much more content than the post itself and the platform
treats unregistered users as if they didn't deserve to read the content.

~~~
whatshisface
People use Twitter to write long blog posts because of one simple fact: the
presence of people to read your writing is more valuable than any possibible
combination of typesetting, CSS, and noninvasive ad placement.

~~~
sweden
It would work just as fine writing a blog post on an appropriate platform and
then sharing the link through Twitter.

------
grawprog
I came into possession of a couple of TI-74 basicalcs a little while ago with
a printer attachement and a couple of ROM cards with some kind of tax software
on them.

They're pretty cool little devices. Kind of frustrating to program on though.
I wouldn't have wanted to have to do that for a living. But still pretty cool
to have something with that kind of power you can carry in a large pocket in
1985.

TI-74 specs:

TMS70C46 CPU[1] (C70009, another chip from TMS 7000 family also reported)[2]

31 5×7 character LCD

32+4 KB ROM

8 KB RAM

RAM/ROM memory expansion port

Hexbus port

80 characters per line (31 visible)

powered by 4 AAA-size batteries

