WITHt the most exciting moments in the history of technology are those episodes in which the energy and determination of the individual sets something in motion that everyone considers impossible or unlikely to succeed. When Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone in 2007, competitors at the time claimed that such a device could not work. They meant the presentation of websites on a small display and the smooth operation with the fingertip. As is well known, the story ended differently.
Years earlier, a similar success story played out: people didn’t want the device in their own house, marketing opposed it and spoke of a “toy”. Experts at the university also advised against it, but the enterprising boss overcame all concerns and launched the first scientific calculator, the HP-35, 50 years ago. The supposedly hopeless device became a spectacular success and milestone. It calculated logarithms, exponential functions and trigonometric functions. And all of this with the dimensions of exactly 5.8 American inches long and 3.2 inches wide, these were the dimensions of Bill Hewlett’s shirt pockets, hence the name pocket calculator.
Bill Hewlett, born in 1913, founded the Hewlett-Packard company with David Packard in 1939, which initially became one of the largest manufacturers of test and measurement instruments. Calculators were followed by personal computers and printers.
From typewriter to pocket calculator in just four years
The HP-35 replaced abacus and slide rules, as well as larger computers such as the HP-9100A scientific calculator. This was the first car to be called a personal computer in 1968, although it has nothing in common with a PC as we know it today. The name resulted from the fact that this model, the size of a typewriter, was the first to allow direct access to the computing unit and not via punch cards, which were first given to the operator in a computing center. It worked with a magnetic core memory and could display three rows of numbers, in 1968 around 4900 dollars were to be paid.
Four years later, Hewlett-Packard engineers had reduced the device from the size of a typewriter to a tenth of its size and thus to the size of a pocket calculator. And not only that: the speed has also increased tenfold and at the same time the manufacturing costs have been reduced to a tenth.
Look inside: The logic board of the HP-35 with coils, capacitors and circuits. Where previously only a few dozen transistors made up a computing unit, there were now thousands in one component.
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Image: Verena Mueller
The HP-35, the number in the name is the number of keys, started in the United States for $395 and came to Germany in 1972. It cost around 2,000 marks, roughly a gross monthly salary at the time. Immediately after the announcement, the rush to the device began. General Electric alone ordered 20,000 copies in one fell swoop. Contrary to expectations, the HP-35 was an immediate success, and in 1973 the HP-35 became the first scientific calculator to be used in space, on the American Skylab space station.