Miss the scientific calculators of old? My brother paid $300 for one in the early '70s, and was the coolest kid in school, at least until the same calculator was discounted to $150 (Seinfeld "Newman" voice: Gordon Moore!). Wish the iPhone had that? Here's a tip from a TOP reader: open up the simple calculator on the iPhone. Now turn the phone sideways to landscape orientation. There ya go.
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
Mark L: "Hi, Works on my Samsung S21 too, I never knew that! Thank you for that."
Gary Merken: "My oldest brother went off to college in 1973. My parents bought him a calculator. It could add, subtract, multiply, divide, do square roots, and compute percentages. That's it. Cost? $215 (about $1,500 in 2023 dollars). A few years later I saw that exact same model in a remainder bin at Caldor, a now-defunct regional discount department-store chain. The discounted price was $15."
George Andros: "How about the slide ruler? I have shown my slide ruler from my 1953 college freshman physics class to dozens of people under 30 and they have no idea of what it is, what it does, or its vintage. It made beginning calculus visually intuitive. Gone, along with cursive handwriting."
Alan Whiting: "I tutor high school science and math, and college prep. Some students use their phone calculators; we discourage that, because phones are so distracting otherwise. The currently accepted graphing calculators, like the TI-84, have an amazing range of features; no one person uses even a fraction of them (something you've commented on for cameras). The user's manual for the TI-83 (I have it on my iPhone) is 827 pages long. All that sophistication doesn't prevent students coming up with wrong answers. I wrote an essay for them entitled 'Your Calculator is Lying to You (and vice versa)' that none of them read."
On iOS at least, there is also an app called PCalc that is my very most favorite calculator app, complete with RPN for those HP calculator computer geeks among us.
Posted by: BWJones | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 02:03 PM
I became sold on the iphone when I discovered an app that emulates (exactly, except for the three-dimensional buttons) a Hewlett-Packard HP-11C calculator. I have a real one on my desk, bought in grad school (mumble, mumble, mumble) years ago, but having the app means I can continue to work formulas from the inside out using reverse Polish notation, by pushing numbers onto a stack and then performing operations on the contents of the stack. Once I crossed that bridge, the bridge fell into the canyon and I can't get back.
Posted by: Rick Denney | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 02:21 PM
A big frustration for me is that the built-in calculator apps on iPhone as well as Android (at least the Google Android phones) lack a memory function. M+ and MR are so freaking useful, and are on any basic 4-function calculator, but not in apps.
Now if you would please, get off my lawn. I have clouds to yell at.
Patrick
Posted by: Patrick Perez | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 02:38 PM
I miss the old ones. I've had a Hewlett-Packard HP11C since the mid-1980s, and have always thought it was one of the best designed products ever. It's sturdy, has tactile keys, and is the perfect size and weight. Still use it regularly.
Posted by: Dale | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 03:21 PM
I just recently found this out by accident. There are of course, many apps for iPhone (and android!) that emulate (down to the bugs!) classic HP calculators of old, and the last HP calculator, the Prime.
emu48 is one such emulator.
If you are a *real* geek, A register level (for PC's) of some of the original HP calculators.
Download it here: https://sarahkmarr.com/retrohp1973.html
Posted by: KeithB | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 03:50 PM
for a couple of bucks you can get the HP 15 from the Apple app store and run it on a phone or tablet. Waaaay better. (And I own a HP 15 from mid '80s)
Posted by: Dennis | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 04:59 PM
Hi, Works on my Samsung S21 too, I never knew that!
Thank you for that.
Posted by: Mark L | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 07:14 PM
I recommend the app "pc calc" for iOS (there's also other OS versions) - more than I need for $10 - I use the 'conversion' units all the time. I also love the way I can set it up to turn into an old HP 12C reverse polish entry by flipping my phone sideways...
Posted by: Bear. | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 07:28 PM
this works on my Galaxy S10 (Android) also. Thanks for the tip.
Posted by: MikeR | Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 08:55 PM
Remember logarithm books? I still don't really understand what they were for...
Posted by: Patrick Dodds | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 03:07 AM
I'm old enough to remember using a slide rule in school (with books of logarithmic tables) but probably don't remember how.
There's an antique shop near me which has an old Casio calculator from the late 70s in the window. Nothing like spotting something you used to have in an antique shop to make you feel old!
My old immediate boss used to have one of those HP calculators which used reverse Polish notation. He knew how to use it too! Nobody was going to borrow it.
But the funkiest calculator has to be the Casio VL-Tone. It does sums AND plays tunes. It was even used in a hit record!
Posted by: Antony Shepherd | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 03:26 AM
Like BWJones I use PCalc but the free Lite version which also has an RPN option. There is no calculator built into iPadOS for some reason.
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 06:29 AM
I have my old K&E slide rule as well as a circular version, but there is also a slide rule simulator app on android, so I don't need a calculator.
Posted by: Luke | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 07:21 AM
I took a calculator (solar powered!) when I visited some people in Leipzig, East Germany in 1984. They were amazed. My father had been given it for free by British Car Auctions as part of their advertising to clients; in East Germany it would have cost more than they had. It eventually went to one of their friends who was enrolled on a maths degree.
Posted by: Chris Bertram | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 08:22 AM
Patrick
It takes about 1-min to download and install RealCalc and all your calculator issues are resolved. RPN or algebraic? No problem. Memory functions? Gotcha covered. Physical constants and conversions? Check.
Best calculator I've ever used and it's free.
Posted by: John Abee | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 08:46 AM
This works on my mid-level Android phone, and I also had no idea, so thanks! FWIW, my most used feature of my phone's calculator is instant conversions for metric to standard and every combination, weight, distance, volume via the tiny icons on the calculator's screen. How many feet in an acre? How many MPH in 20 knots? How far in miles is X kilometers? Instant conversions in seconds without having to know the conversation factor... great.
I was in college in the mid-'70s and bought one of the top scientific calculators of that time. It had red LCDs that became invisible in any bright ambient light making it unusable outdoors. I remember all the nerds arguing the advantages of H.P. vs. Texas instruments like the cool kids fighting over the Beatles or the Stones. That was a lot of money for me at that time and it was completely abandoned after the one class that I needed for.
Posted by: Albert Smith | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 10:44 AM
I have a thing for calculators, and still have my 1970s Texas Instruments SR-10 that mostly replaced my first "calculator" shown here...
Posted by: William Schneider | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 11:48 AM
Probably the only excuse I'll ever have to show this (admittedly rather meh) still life I shot on film with a Leicaflex. A manual metal mechanical camera used to photograph a manual mechanical calculator. I did use one very briefly in high school just to be an iconoclast, but switched to electronic calculators in engineering school. I never did get used to Reverse Polish Notation used in the old HP calculators.
Posted by: Howard Sandler | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 12:08 PM
In the early 1950s, when I worked as a chemist in a paint factory, the slide rule was the normal tool for calculations.
Posted by: Herman Krieger | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 12:28 PM
At the University of Washington in the early 70's, the HP-35 came out, price $395 ($2800 in today's dollars!). In my physics class, we were only required to provide answers on tests to the precision of the slide rules that we (me!) were using. My most treasured memory from those days was running up the stairs in a building to get to class, with a friend who had the HP-35. At one point, it fell out of his back pack and proceeded to bounce down the stairs. He almost had a heart attack, but it survived in fine shape!
Posted by: Lawrence Plummer | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 02:15 PM
I used slide rule and logarithm tables in school and then slide rule at work when calculators and computers were just coming on the scene.
One advantage of the slide rule was that it taught youto keep track of the order of magnitude that the result should be which may be one of the sources of errors with calculators that Alan Whiting refers to in his comment.
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 03:36 PM
Really like the comments about slide rulers. Would it be fair to say that a lot of the early work in the race to the Moon was done on slide rulers?
Posted by: DavidB | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 03:59 PM
When I was a teenager in the 60s my maths teacher called the slide rule a 'guessing stick'. He didn't approve.
In the late 60s I worked for three years for BP, the oil company. There were threee grades of calculator, depending on your seniority. A mechanical Monroe calculator driven by turning a handle; a mechanical Monroe with an electric motor; really important people had something called an Anita, mains driven and about the size of a hostess trolley and generating great heat, which was probably less effective than the most basic calculators of a few years later.
Posted by: Timothy Auger | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 05:00 PM
All, or most calculators, have a scientific calculator mode and in the old days you just clicked a button to go back and forth. Now, I guess, the make you go crazy searching for the the scientific calculator mode.
Dumb.
Was your brothers calculator the HP-41? I still use my HP-41CX to do addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication.
Kind of like taking your $50,000 SUV 3 blocks to get groceries.
Posted by: John Krill | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 07:15 PM
Works on my LG
Posted by: Mike Plews | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 09:59 PM
I’d like to 2nd Dale’s words about the HP 11c. Perfect item. Used it Fr/So year of engineering school. I switched to studying math and CS, whose classes did not require a calculator, but I kept it fondly in my desk drawer for years. would occasionally mess with it the way you might mess with an old camera, just to feel it in the hand.
Posted by: xf mj | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 11:01 PM
I started with log tables at school in the 60’s, then slide rules, and in 1974, for the first time, we were allowed to take a pocket calculator into our exams for the Australian Stock Exchange exams. Can’t remember the brand, but it had glowing orange wires for the display (8 numbers), but it ate batteries! I recall I had eight spare AA batteries in my pocket to last through the exam!
Posted by: Gavin Paterson | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 11:02 PM
Speaking of calculators, I use this from time to time with some of the older lenses:
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/aperture-area
Posted by: Bob G. | Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 11:06 PM
I still have and use my HP12c which I purchased in college over 40 years ago. I still work great. More amazingly, you can still buy a new one for $50. I doubt there is ANY consumer electronic product that can say anything close to the same thing. It is incredible!
Posted by: Al DaValle | Friday, 01 September 2023 at 08:08 AM
Two good things about the old slide rules. It only gave two significant numbers of ‘accuracy’. And you had to think where the decimal point goes, or how many zeros to add. Now people often get eight or ten decimal points of nonsense that can be off the actual number by a factor of 1000. People have lost their common sense, ability to think and estimate.
Posted by: Ilkka | Friday, 01 September 2023 at 10:34 AM
I still use an hp-32S. A pocket nutcracker when a spreadsheet would be a sledgehammer. But I haven't programmed the calculator in years now, and have quite forgotten how to do it.
Long after scientific calculators became affordable, I still preferred my slide rule when selecting a pair of standard resistors to give a desired ratio. The best tool for the job.
Posted by: John Ironside | Friday, 01 September 2023 at 12:46 PM
Loved (and still have!) my brother's HP calculators. HP 25 and HP 41C. The 41C is in my desk for whenever I need to use a calculator.
Posted by: Paul Van | Friday, 01 September 2023 at 03:06 PM
I transitioned from using an HP 48GX in my college days to now using a Casio fx-55 PLUS. Hey, if it gets the job done, right?
The 48GX disappeared after my son took a liking to it when I taught him how to play a game on it.
I can't recall the exact Casio model that was permitted when I was studying mathematics (the 48GX was forbidden on test days), but the professors were pretty lenient, allowing us to exploit the calculator's capabilities to the fullest. To prepare for exams, I would program equations into its memory. On my first test day, I found myself having to erase nearly everything stored to make it operational. As I sat at my desk, I imagined all the calculus equations spilling onto the floor as I deleted them from memory. I always felt there was an image to be made in there. LOL!
Posted by: darlene | Friday, 01 September 2023 at 08:03 PM
I started in engineering with a 10” Post Versalog slide rule, including a magnifying glass that attached to the cursor. (K&E made a 20” version, and I probably would have purchased it instead—had I known.)
In 1973 I saw the HP-65 programable calculator (one could store the programs on chewing gum sized magnetic cards) and I immediately bought one for $800, and retired my slide rule.
And now? Teaching physical sciences and engineering, I use a 5” Post Versalog slide rule.
Posted by: Daniel Speyer | Saturday, 02 September 2023 at 12:43 AM
I still have very old OTIS KING slide rule. And some time ago I even knew, how to use it.
Posted by: janekr | Saturday, 02 September 2023 at 03:53 PM
Given the number of people here who were unaware of this behaviour until now, and the fact that its discovery appears to rely mostly on fate, coupled with the knowledge that one might disable auto-rotation on the phone if one didn't want the screen to keep flipping and thus be unable to access this feature anyway, some people might refer to this as utterly lousy and failed UI design. Some people might say that. And who's to say they'd be wrong?
Posted by: Ade | Saturday, 02 September 2023 at 07:48 PM