Celebrating the HP-55 my first HP Calculator

[Namir]

On this day, Aug 22, 1975, my family bought me my first HP calculator, the HP-55, from the Geneva airport. It was the very first step in personal computing! Thirty eight years later and I am still into calculators, programming, numerical analysis, and statistics, more than ever!

Thanks mom and dad, wherever you are, for that wonderful gift!

Namir

Edited: 22 Aug 2012, 10:28 p.m. after one or more responses were posted

[Thomas Radtke]

Quote:

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[...] 1975 [...] Thirty eight [...] later

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Perfect RPN! But ... what new models have I missed the past 12 month? ;^).

Edit: Have a wonderful anniversary!

Edited: 22 Aug 2012, 2:31 p.m.

[Arnaud Amiel]

Being born in 1975, this makes me feel so... old.
I have a 55 and like it a lot too despite its limitations.

[Thomas Radtke]

Isn't getting around those limitations half the fun? :-)

No HP-55 here, but a Commodore PR100 and some Casio fx-180p and the like. I like all of them for what they were and what doors they opened to me.

[Luiz C. Vieira (Brazil)]

Congrats!

And thanks for sharing!

Luiz (Brazil)

[Matt Agajanian]

Congrats and happy anniversary. I remember how ecstatic I was when I got my first HP, a 32E in 1978.

[Thomas Radtke]

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Congrats and happy anniversary. I remember how ecstatic I was when I got my first HP, a 32E in 1978.

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I wasn't when I got my first HP, the 20S. The keys were stiff and the LCD had no protection, quite different from the Casio I was used to. As soon as I got around the initial problems, I found a 32SII for cheap and couldn't resist. And there was another problem - RPN. How terrible! I tried everything but that damn beast couldn't be made to understand algebraic entries except for the cumbersome equation editor.

The 32SII eventually became my primary calculator for the decades to come, and it will stay that way until one of us dies :-).

Being late to RPN, I understand why people used to modern algebraic models refuse to change. Both one of my bosses and one collegue used one of my RPN calcs and immediately said 'I don't want that'. One needs to be convinced by features other than RPN, and I think that's impossible in times where calculators usually are more capable than the average user needs it to be. Sad but likely true.

So, this decade may see the last RPN calculators being developed, or, as I fear, has already seen it.