More calculators
Oct. 22nd, 2006 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinOh, great, I've got myself paging through people's online calculator collections again.
This Omron was my first calculator. I had others after that, for which I don't recall having much affection until I got one of these Sharp BASIC-programmables, which was pretty nice (though it was a low-end one).
The newest dedicated handheld calculator I have now is actually an HP-28S from the mid-Eighties, a radically advanced calculator for the time (whose peculiar little N cells have, at this writing, died--I should replace them sometime, though the incredibly poorly designed battery compartment makes this easier said than done). I used to have a 48SX but somebody stole it ages ago. I've got an emulator for my computer, though. The RPL language that they both use is probably my favorite computer language of all time.
I thought pocket calculator development had stagnated, but it looks as if various companies have been putting out ever more advanced graphing calculators since then, with better symbolic math capabilities, though the development since the late Eighties feels linear, incremental, not explosive as it has been with other portable computer-ish devices. Certainly graphing calcs have become a must for high-school math students, with the usual controversy that accompanies any change in education. Those Eighties HPs were among the earliest of the genre.
Meanwhile, the basic four-function-with-memory pocket calculators, after becoming essentially disposable drugstore-rack items, have started to vanish since the ability to do simple calculations is a universal feature of cell phones. Everything gets sucked into cell phones eventually.
This Omron was my first calculator. I had others after that, for which I don't recall having much affection until I got one of these Sharp BASIC-programmables, which was pretty nice (though it was a low-end one).
The newest dedicated handheld calculator I have now is actually an HP-28S from the mid-Eighties, a radically advanced calculator for the time (whose peculiar little N cells have, at this writing, died--I should replace them sometime, though the incredibly poorly designed battery compartment makes this easier said than done). I used to have a 48SX but somebody stole it ages ago. I've got an emulator for my computer, though. The RPL language that they both use is probably my favorite computer language of all time.
I thought pocket calculator development had stagnated, but it looks as if various companies have been putting out ever more advanced graphing calculators since then, with better symbolic math capabilities, though the development since the late Eighties feels linear, incremental, not explosive as it has been with other portable computer-ish devices. Certainly graphing calcs have become a must for high-school math students, with the usual controversy that accompanies any change in education. Those Eighties HPs were among the earliest of the genre.
Meanwhile, the basic four-function-with-memory pocket calculators, after becoming essentially disposable drugstore-rack items, have started to vanish since the ability to do simple calculations is a universal feature of cell phones. Everything gets sucked into cell phones eventually.