He actually became the first electronic logarithmic ruler and handled all the calculations in a flash.
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“I want it to be ten times smaller, ten times more powerful, and ten times cheaper,” Bill Hewlett said of the 9100A desktop programmable calculator.
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The twenty-kilogram typewriter was the company’s latest hit, which Hewlett founded with Dave Packard and which grew from a garage to a company with 9,000 employees. The 9100A calculator handled calculations of exponential and trigonometric functions or logarithms.
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Pic of the Day: Shown here is a Hewlett Packard 9100A programmable calculator. While it was considered a computer, it was marketed as a calculator because Bill Hewitt thought that it would have a card time selling because “it didn’t look like an IBM”. pic.twitter.com/jAyfRtHIxh
– Saint Nucifora 🇨🇦 (@MrGoodBits) August 13, 2021
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HP 9100A Desktop Calculator
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The right time to fulfill Hewlett’s wishes came after 1970, when the first chips appeared. Sharp and other Japanese companies have introduced pocket calculators capable of basic numerical operations. However, 9100A authors Tom Osborn and Dave Cochran wanted an electronic equivalent of a logarithmic ruler that would fit in a shirt pocket.
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The first prototype was made in November 1971. Looking at the thirty-five basic keyboard buttons, Hewlett came up with the name of the new model: “It will be the HP-35.”
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350 thousand people bought it
At Hewlett-Packard, they originally intended to make pocket calculators just for their engineers, but eventually decided to sell them and people bought hundreds of thousands. If you wanted to load your breast pocket with a quarter-kilo calculator, you had to relieve your wallet by a full $ 395 (according to the current exchange rate of CZK 8,640). But over time, its price has dropped below $ 200.
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Before the first calculator was replaced by newer types, 350,000 people acquired it. In July 2007, Hewlett-Packard introduced a replica of the HP-35 calculator, a retro model of the HP-35s.
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