
The rebirth of the HP-12C: How one man reimagined a calculator from 1981 - elemeno
http://www.alphr.com/technology/1001717/the-rebirth-of-the-hp-12c-how-one-man-reimagined-a-calculator-from-1981
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twakefield
I spent a lot of money on a Finance degree. Then I got my first job and they
gave me one of these calculators along with the manual [1]. I then realized
that everything I had learned was distilled down to this little booklet. It
was a shocking realization. I still have and use it. It's a good example of
great design.

[1]
[http://h20331.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/cache/299940-0-0-225-121.htm...](http://h20331.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/cache/299940-0-0-225-121.html)

~~~
bitdiddle
I couldn't agree more. My first boss gave me the HP-12C as a year end gift
back in 1985. I still use it once a week or so or anytime I need to do a bond
calculation.

I'm still on the original battery, kid you not! I love the feel of the keys.

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PhantomGremlin
In prehistoric days, engineering students carried slide rules. Fortunately,
just as I entered college, HP came up with the original scientific calculator,
the HP-35.[1]

Shortly later, HP introduced the HP-45, a significantly improved variant. I
still remember taking $422.65 ($395 plus 7% tax) to HP's sales office in an
upper floor of the Exxon building in NYC in order to buy one. These things
weren't available at Best Buy (probably because Best Buy didn't happen until
1983). :-)

The 1970s and 1980s were the heyday of HP calculators.[2] But all good things
come to an end. I think it was Carly Fiorina that killed the calculator
division, but I could be wrong.

I still have a few working HP calculators from the old days, but typing
"python" at a terminal prompt is usually more convenient.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-35](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-35)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_calculators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_calculators)

~~~
auxym
Recent mechanical engineering grad here, I use my (new model) 35s on a daily
basis. Despite being somewhat cheaply built ('5' button broke early, still
works but now wiggles around), I couldn't do without physical buttons and
especially RPN. I'm also a heavy user of python for data crunching, but
they're just different tools for different jobs.

Now, that DM-15L is tempting. Bit expensive, but tempting. A boss of mine,
during a co-op internship, still had an original 15c on his desk and banged on
it daily. Great engineer.

As a last aside, for a terminal RPN calc app, my favorite has been 'orpie' for
a while, check it out, I think it's built in Ocaml too, which should satisfy
HN FP-fetishists.

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rebootthesystem
Let's see:

2 HP-41's 1 HP-41C 1 HP-41CX 1 HP-48gx 1 HP-49g 1 HP-16C 1 HP-32S 1 HP-48S 1
HP-35S 1 HP-200LX 1 HP-Prime

All in perfect condition, manuals, original boxes, accessories.

Yeah, I've been into the RPN thing for quite some time.

Favorite?

The 35S sits by the CNC machining center inside a zip-loc bag to keep oil and
metal shavings off of it.

Desk-side is mostly the 41CX.

One of the things nobody has mentioned yet is how much better the 41's LCD
display is when compared to ALL other HP calculators, excluding Prime. I tend
to do a lot of coding and CAD work under subdued lighting. The 41's display is
very easy to see just with the monitor's illumination. The other's suffer from
low contrast LCD's that are hard to see outside bright office environments.
Prime is self lit so that's not a problem.

I had a couple of others but gave them away. One was an HP-50g and the other
was a folding model, just can't remember the model number. Yeah, HP has made
some, well, less than great calculators.

~~~
Zombieball
I did a bit of research about the 41c after reading your endorsement. It seems
they also had plugable ROM modules you could buy loaded with various functions
and programs!

Do you happen to have any? I'm curious to hear what your opinion of them is.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Yes, I do. I'd have to dig them up but I remember a mechanical design module
as well as an electrical design module.

You could also plug in other things into those ports. I have a magnetic card
reader that was used to save and load your programs. There's also a little
printer and an expanded I/O interface. I haven't looked at some of this stuff
in years.

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Zombieball
Not sure this is a legitimate article title. As far as I understand the 12C
has always been in production. You can buy it to this day at Staples.

The 16C which is also made by swissmicros is more of a rebirth. Original ones
sell for a pretty penny on eBay. It would be great if HP legitimately brought
the 16c back though as one of the large appeals of a physical calcutor is the
quality of the hardware itself.

~~~
rbanffy
Large part of the cost is the tooling. The tooling to build a modern 12C is
pretty much the same one would need to build the 10, 15 and 16 versions.

But they would be low volume items. Few engineers who grew up without them
would adopt a pocket calculator. The 12C is still alive because, it would
seem, finance people are very resistant to change.

~~~
a3n
The rules of rounding in some state's real estate environments are actually
specified in terms of what you can choose on this calculator; you're required
to use one particular choice. I imagine the calculator is embedded even deeper
in more financial-oriented environments.

~~~
Zombieball
I didn't quite understand what the article meant when it says some documents
and contracts reference the calculator and its manual. I suppose this is an
example.

That's crazy!

~~~
rbanffy
There are parts of Microsoft OOXML spec (now an ISO standard) that say
something very much like "If you get this kind of data, do whatever Word 6.0
does".

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fnordfnordfnord
I have an HP-41C. The buttons are nearly perfect. I would love to have a
modern version of it.

I bought a new HP33 for some unknown reason. It is garbage. The buttons are
horrible.

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incepted
The HP-41 was fascinating for an obscure reason called "synthetic
programming". It was a series of key presses and operations that unlocked a
mode in the calculators that allowed you to do all kinds of things that were
never allowed in the first place, such as controlling individual pixels on the
screen.

It was absolutely magical

[http://www.hpmuseum.org/prog/synth41.htm](http://www.hpmuseum.org/prog/synth41.htm)

~~~
ihuk
If you have HP-48/49 you can get an HP-41 emulator from
[http://www.hrastprogrammer.com/emulators.htm](http://www.hrastprogrammer.com/emulators.htm).
You can do synthetic programming on it.

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Animats
What "rebirth"? HP still sells the 12C. It's at WalMart and on Amazon.

I still have an original HP 11C, the "scientific" model with trig functions
instead of present value. Works fine, and I use it occasionally. The batteries
were last replaced in the 1990s. The record battery life is now 22 years and
counting.

HP was very proud of the quality of those calculators. You cannot wear off the
lettering on the keys; it goes all the way through the key.

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MegaDeKay
I still have the HP-15C I got back in 1990 and use it regularly. The keyboard
still works perfectly and I've only changed the batteries in it two or three
times. The only thing wrong with it is a rubber foot or two that has fallen
off the back. Absolutely amazing.

~~~
jhallenworld
I like the construction of these calculators, but I'm not a huge fan of the
programming language. I think the Casio FX-4000P / RS EC-4020 was the
pinnacle, but this was a few years later (and admittedly, not as numerically
good as the HP). Editing was far easier with the dot-matrix display. Compare
the programs:

[http://www.rskey.org/CMS/8-programmable-
calculators/299-fx40...](http://www.rskey.org/CMS/8-programmable-
calculators/299-fx4000p)

[http://www.rskey.org/hp15c](http://www.rskey.org/hp15c)

Casio improved the fx4000p, but I think the design was not as coherent:
[http://www.rskey.org/fx4500p](http://www.rskey.org/fx4500p)

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bambax
I bought a 12C "anniversary edition" some years ago; it's fantastic.

You can still buy them (they're listed on Amazon) so it's not clear why the
article mentions "rebirth": the thing's not dead!!

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doggydogs94
I noticed that I have an HP 12-C along with the spiral bound instruction book.

