Post by excoriator on Sept 9, 2020 16:49:55 GMT
For years I have struggled with algebraic calculators - Casio and the like. They are OK, but if you have a formula of some complexity you need to use brackets, and I invariably forget how many right hand brackets there are and cock it up. The alternative is to write down intermediate results which is pretty tedious and then you have to enter them agin.
A long time ago I got my employer to buy what was, I think, the first scientific calculator made by Hewlett Packard. The HP35 A solid brick of a thing, it would just about go into a pocket. It had LED 7 segment displays. But the really nice thing about it was that it Used RPN, in which you always put numbers in first followed by the operation you want to do with them. Sounds awkward, but once you get used to it it's brilliant. You don't need to worry about brackets and you can put in really complicated functions very easily. I don't know what happened to it but it went years ago and much cheaper scientific calculators became available.
But I got lost in a jungle of brackets again not long ago and decided to see if anyone else used RPN. It seems not. Even HP is getting out of the market and has gone algebraic but they still make a version of the old HP35 using an LCD display. Otherwise it looks identical. I briefly considered a DM42 which is a very good copy of the HP42 and boasts 34 digit accuracy - far more than I need. It too has RPN, but the cost - £170 - made my hair stand on end. Anyway, I've just bought the HP35s at a much more reasonable price of just over £40 and await its arrival. It will, I hope, be like meeting an old friend. From memory, the original one the company bought cost well over £1,000. I expect it will be faster, and it runs on a couple of coin batteries, for months, so charging is unnecessary.
A long time ago I got my employer to buy what was, I think, the first scientific calculator made by Hewlett Packard. The HP35 A solid brick of a thing, it would just about go into a pocket. It had LED 7 segment displays. But the really nice thing about it was that it Used RPN, in which you always put numbers in first followed by the operation you want to do with them. Sounds awkward, but once you get used to it it's brilliant. You don't need to worry about brackets and you can put in really complicated functions very easily. I don't know what happened to it but it went years ago and much cheaper scientific calculators became available.
But I got lost in a jungle of brackets again not long ago and decided to see if anyone else used RPN. It seems not. Even HP is getting out of the market and has gone algebraic but they still make a version of the old HP35 using an LCD display. Otherwise it looks identical. I briefly considered a DM42 which is a very good copy of the HP42 and boasts 34 digit accuracy - far more than I need. It too has RPN, but the cost - £170 - made my hair stand on end. Anyway, I've just bought the HP35s at a much more reasonable price of just over £40 and await its arrival. It will, I hope, be like meeting an old friend. From memory, the original one the company bought cost well over £1,000. I expect it will be faster, and it runs on a couple of coin batteries, for months, so charging is unnecessary.