Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator
by Keith Houston · 22 Aug 2023 · 405pp · 105,395 words
-35 13. The Pulsar Time Computer Calculator 14. The Texas Instruments TI-81 15. Software Arts Visicalc Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Further Reading Index INTRODUCTION The pocket calculator is predicated on two things: calculation and pockets. And though humanity can rightfully claim to having placed the one into the other, when it comes
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from the final few millennia of the three-million-year expanse of the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic era. Those bones are humanity’s first pocket calculators: For the prehistoric humans who carved them, they were mathematical notebooks and counting aids rolled into one. For the anthropologists who unearthed them thousands of
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counting board an impossibility.95 The counting board was dead and the abacus’s days were numbered: the next step in the evolution of the pocket calculator was under way. * The Sumerians’ computed value was 1.414222; the true value is 1.414214[ . . . ]. † Evidence for Egyptian abacuses and counting boards is
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the western point of an equilateral triangle anchored by Augsburg and Nuremberg, two cities famed for their clockwork masterpieces,* and it was here that the pocket calculator would take its next evolutionary step.6 In 1609, Tübingen’s university awarded a degree in languages and theology to a student, Wilhelm Schickard, who
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Geneva to serve under Dr. John Pell, Cromwell’s ambassador to Switzerland.43 (Pell, quite coincidentally, is likely to have created a symbol that adorns pocket calculators the world over. A Swiss student of Pell’s, Johann Rahn, wrote an influential math textbook called Teutsche Algebra in which he proposed the use
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. And yet, the act of merely trying to build a calculating machine was revolutionary in itself. Without Pascal, Morland, or Schickard, the future of the pocket calculator might have turned out very differently indeed. * For the clockmakers’ guilds of the time, “masterpiece” had a deceptive meaning: it referred to a clock submitted
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it, and, as such, the names of Poleni, Lépine, Braun, Stanhope, and others live on as footnotes rather than landmarks in the history of the pocket calculator. As it turns out, the first truly successful mechanical calculator would also be the progenitor of the last, with a combined lifetime that spanned a
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having a printer rather than a display. Two years after its introduction, the Pocketronic had already acquired a whiff of obsolescence.76 Was the first “pocket” calculator a failure? Certainly, the Pocketronic was so late in seeing the light of day that the impact of Kilby, Merryman, and Van Tassel’s remarkable
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gain the confidence to strike out on its own—a decision that would have stark consequences for Canon and many others. Texas Instruments and the pocket calculator had unfinished business. * Kilby’s second test circuit was a flip-flop, the classic switch-based memory circuit first invented in 1919, but with
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-in wrist strap helped protect one’s investment.28 The Busicom Handy-LE, also known as the LE-120A. This is the world’s first pocket calculator. The switch labeled “4,” “2,” and “0” controls the number of decimal places used in calculations. Calculators that provided a “floating” decimal point were
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new era for integrated electronics!”) appeared in November 1971.61 The rest was history. Shortly thereafter, Busicom was history too. Having developed the first real pocket calculator and pioneered the modern CPU, the company lost its footing during the ferocious calculator price wars of the early 1970s. By 1974 Busicom was bankrupt
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Until, that is, a hitherto obscure electronics manufacturer named Hewlett-Packard exploded the status quo with a million-dollar rush job to build the best pocket calculator the world had ever seen. The remarkable thing about that calculator, the HP-35, was that it did not rely on some breakthrough in math
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of small, tightly packed keys, it was reasonable to think that an engineer or mathematician would have no trouble with the buttons on Liljenwall’s pocket calculator.17 (Later, some users of the new calculator would operate it with their thumbs, like a smartphone.)18 A watershed moment in calculator design:
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zeal, funded by Cochran’s asked-for million, and executed on a strict schedule by employees poached as needed from across HP’s divisions, the pocket calculator project became a moonshot for the normally conservative company.24 Cochran’s design called for five chips of three different types: an arithmetic chip capable
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circuits then in production.26 The new calculator would need every ounce of that sophistication. Echoing the Intel 4004, the arithmetic unit of HP’s pocket calculator was exceptionally simple, supporting only addition, subtraction, and, because it operated on decimal numbers rather than binary, multiplication and division by ten rather than by
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Hewlett’s pocket marvel was more than just a moneymaker. First, it dealt a hammer blow to the centuries-old slide rule. The four-function pocket calculators already creeping onto the shelves had put the slide rule on notice; now, the HP-35 made it look shockingly anachronistic. Slide rule production lines
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transistorized calculators were still calculators. The HP-35, by contrast, with its incredible precision and its scientific functionality, improved the state of the art in pocket calculators so comprehensively that it seemed to come straight out of Star Trek. It not only eclipsed what had gone before but also cracked open a
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could multiply or divide stopwatch timings by a fixed value—handy for tracking the cost of expensive long-distance phone calls, for example.45 The pocket calculator, all the while, had been going gangbusters. Production had almost doubled every year since the introduction of the first handheld calculators, so that Japan alone
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ever-narrower niches. The humble clock-radio, for instance, was an obvious target for crossbreeding: the fashion designer Pierre Cardin gave his blessing to a pocketable calculator-clock-radio sometime during the 1980s, but such was the deluge of branded items to bear his name that the precise date is lost.57
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A few years earlier, the Hanimex company of Australia released a combined calculator and Dictaphone, unwittingly uniting the pocket calculator with the other vehicle that Texas Instruments had once considered for their microchips.58 And in the late 1970s, Sharp took the concept to a
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circuits redesigned to tackle new problems; those driven by programmable ROM chips could be invested with new algorithms; and a new breed of user-programmable pocket calculators was even easier to customize. In the first category were modest offerings such as Mostek’s 1975 check calculators, which let users track their spending
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hippo’s digestive tract in one piece and, once washed, worked as well as ever. 14 The Texas Instruments TI-81 By 1980, the frenetic pocket calculator race of the preceding decade had slowed to a gentler simmer. America’s once-voracious appetite for calculators now fluctuated only by a few percentage
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Amstrad, Apple, Atari, Commodore, Radio Shack, and Sinclair began to appear in shop windows and on Christmas lists. Kraftwerk might still be singing about their pocket calculators, but in the movies, computers would take starring roles in blockbusters such as TRON, War Games, and Superman III.2 In these films and in
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fight dirty, because in trying to crack it they would come up against the same age-old prejudices that had stymied many others before them. Pocket calculators were everywhere except the classroom. Teachers and educators, especially in the United States, had started experimenting with calculators almost as soon as prices had crept
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students—and, implicitly, as shiny baubles to hold their attention. To support the program, the OSU math department bought thousands of custom-made, four-function pocket calculators from Texas Instruments and put them on sale in campus bookstores for $16.30 each, or about the same as a textbook.16 The initial
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software, students could plot graphs directly rather than having to plug numbers into their calculators over and over again.33 Then, in 1985, a new pocket calculator appeared. It supported the same functions as most other scientific calculators, such as sines, exponentials, logs, and so on, but it could also plot
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technology.59 In Britain, too, a reckoning loomed in 2011 when the new government, led by a Conservative Party whose views toward gadgets such as pocket calculators were exactly as progressive as one might have expected, ordered a review of calculators in schools.60 More damning still, in 2014 the state of
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At DEC, Bricklin had helped develop sophisticated electronic typewriters of the kind that were then taking root in law offices and typing pools, yet the pocket calculator, by comparison, remained steadfastly undisrupted.9 He daydreamed about building a kind of supercalculator that could recompute values on the fly, with a fighter jet
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realize that it could carry out mathematical operations. Instead, they used it to arrange their numbers in rows and columns and reached for their trusty pocket calculators to recalculate their sums as needed.35 The final hurdle to be overcome was a financial one. Despite Frankston’s endless tinkering, VisiCalc worked only
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How to Make the Most of Your Calculator, The Electronic Calculator in Business, Home, and School, and The Calculating Book: Fun and Games with Your Pocket Calculator tracked exactly the mindshare afforded to their subject.70 As time went by, the calculator increasingly succumbed to the Wildean fate of simply not being
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and technology, too, where free-form math programs such as Matlab gifted scientists the same design-refine-repeat workflow that made spreadsheets so attractive and pocket calculators seem so clumsy. In offices and laboratories around the world, the calculator moved from the desk to the desk drawer. But the computer was not
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out by more modern, more capable devices. Until at some point—call it 1990 or thereabouts—society’s collective interest in pocket calculators dropped below a detectable threshold.5 But the pocket calculator was not, and is not, dead. At least, not in the conventional sense. The Nokia Communicator of 1998, emblematic of
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, https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1215046. 32 Tomash, “Interview with Curt Herzstark,” 23. 33 Cliff Stoll, “The Curious History of the First Pocket Calculator,” Scientific American 290, no. 1 (2004): 92–99; “Weight-for-Age” (World Health Organisation), accessed May 17, 2021, https://www.who.int/tools/child-growth
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.vintagecalculators.com/html/the_amazing_curta.html. 56 Tomash, “Interview with Curt Herzstark,” 52. 57 Tomash, “Interview with Curt Herzstark,” 52–54. 58 Stoll, “First Pocket Calculator”; Flamm, “The Amazing Curta.” 59 “Curta Portable Calculator (Advertisement),” Popular Mechanics, May 1952; “CPI Inflation Calculator” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), accessed May 19
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–60. 61 “Arithmometer,” History Computer, accessed May 19, 2021, https://history-computer.com/arithmometer-history-of-the-arithmometer-of-thomas-de-colmar/. 62 Stoll, “First Pocket Calculator”; Jim Bianchi, “The Curta Mechanical Calculator,” Rallye Mazagine, March 1976. 63 Herbert Bruderer, “The World’s Smallest Mechanical Parallel Calculator: Discovery of Original Drawings and
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.electronicdesign.com/technologies/analog/article/21804824/the-first-handheld-digital-calculator-celebrates-50-years-part-1. 34 Cade Metz, “Jerry Merryman, Co-Inventor of the Pocket Calculator, Dies at 86,” New York Times, March 7, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/obituaries/jerry-merryman-dead.html. 35 Okon, “First Handheld
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, “NCR 18-15 Desktop Calculator,” Old Calculator Museum, accessed October 1, 2021, https://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/w-ncr18-15.html; Tout, “Busicom Junior.” 25 “ビジコン ポケット電卓 [Busicom Pocket Calculator],” Dentaku Museum, accessed October 3, 2021, http://www.dentaku-museum.com/calc/calc/10-busicom/busicom/busicom.html. 26 Nigel Tout, “Busicom LE-120A and
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LE-120S,” Vintage Calculators Web Museum, accessed October 3, 2021, http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/busicom_le-120a_-_le-120s.html; “Busicom Pocket Calculator.” 27 “Busicom Pocket Calculator”; “Historical Rates - JPY to USD, January 1, 1970, to February 1, 1970,” fxtop.com, accessed October 3, 2021. 28 Tout, “Busicom LE-120A and
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LE-120S”; “Busicom Pocket Calculator.” 29 “Busicom Pocket Calculator.” 30 Federico Faggin et al., “Oral History Panel on the Development and Promotion of the Intel 4004 Microprocessor,” 2007, 4, 6, https://www.computerhistory
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), Industrialist and Philanthropist” American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2001), https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1302632. 13 Edward T. Liljenwall, “Packaging the Pocket Calculator,” Hewlett-Packard Journal 23, no. 10 (1972): 12, https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal /72jun/jun72.htm. 14 Cochran, “A Quarter Century at HP,” sec
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. The HP 9100A in Bill Hewlett’s Pocket, circa 1969. 15 Liljenwall, “Packaging the Pocket Calculator.” 16 Liljenwall, “Packaging the Pocket Calculator.” 17 Edelman, “Made in USA.” 18 Edelman, “Made in USA.” 19 Cochran, “A Quarter Century at HP,” sec. Scientific Calculators, circa 1966. 20
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.html; “$60 Calculator,” Popular Science 201, no. 5 (November 1972): 107. 35 Nigel Tout, “Clive Sinclair and the Pocket Calculator,” Vintage Calculators Web Museum, 2021, http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/sinclair_-_the_pocket_calculator.html; “Small Pocket Calculator,” Wireless World, August 1972. 36 “Historical Rates - GBP to USD, August 1972,” fxtop.com, accessed November 12, 2021
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/TI-1200/Spirit.htm. 56 “ ‘Compact,’ ‘Diary,’ Checkbook All Count,” Electronics (New York: McGraw Hill, April 3, 1975). 57 “Pierre Cardin Calculator Clock Radio,” The Pocket Calculator Show, October 13, 2002, https://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/magicalgadget/calculator/pierre-cardin-calculator-clock-radio/. 58 Nigel Tout, “Hanimex Calculator-Recorder,” Vintage Calculators Web Museum
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in Collegiate Mathematics, 1989, 114. 34 Joerg Woerner, “Casio Fx-7000G,” Datamath Calculator Museum, 2004, http://www.datamath.org/Related/Casio/fx-7000G.htm. 35 “Pocket Calculator,” Radio-Electronics (Farmingdale, NY: Gernsback, August 1986); “The World’s First Graphic Display Programmable Scientific Calculator,” New Scientist, October 24, 1985; “The First Interactive Graphic
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to Make the Most of Your Calculator (London: White Lion, 1977); James T. Rogers and Bob Korn, The Calculating Book : Fun and Games with Your Pocket Calculator (London: Wildwood House, 1976). epilogue 1 Michael F. McGovern, “Stacks, ‘Pacs,’ and User Hacks: A Handheld History of Personal Computing,” in Objects and Investigations, to
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The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
by Michael Lewis · 29 Sep 1999 · 146pp · 43,446 words
Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight
by Chris Dubbs, Emeline Paat-dahlstrom and Charles D. Walker · 1 Jun 2011 · 376pp · 110,796 words
Basic Economics
by Thomas Sowell · 1 Jan 2000 · 850pp · 254,117 words
Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America
by Giles Slade · 14 Apr 2006 · 384pp · 89,250 words
Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980
by Rick Perlstein · 17 Aug 2020
Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse
by Adrian Wooldridge · 29 Nov 2011 · 460pp · 131,579 words
When the Iron Lady Ruled Britain
by Robert Chesshyre · 15 Jan 2012 · 434pp · 150,773 words
The Big Score
by Michael S. Malone · 20 Jul 2021
The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance
by Henry Petroski · 2 Jan 1990 · 490pp · 150,172 words
Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
by Malcolm Harris · 14 Feb 2023 · 864pp · 272,918 words
Scuba Diving
by Dennis K. Graver · 14 Mar 2017 · 288pp · 90,114 words
The Soul of a New Machine
by Tracy Kidder · 1 Jan 1981 · 299pp · 99,080 words
The Big U
by Neal Stephenson · 2 Jan 1984 · 344pp · 103,532 words
The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State
by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg · 3 Feb 1997 · 582pp · 160,693 words
The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age
by David S. Abraham · 27 Oct 2015 · 386pp · 91,913 words
A People's History of Poverty in America
by Stephen Pimpare · 11 Nov 2008 · 468pp · 123,823 words
The Dream of the Iron Dragon
by Robert Kroese · 6 Dec 2017 · 459pp · 128,458 words
Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work
by Iain Gately · 6 Nov 2014 · 352pp · 104,411 words
Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World
by Nick Bostrom · 26 Mar 2024 · 547pp · 173,909 words
Microserfs
by Douglas Coupland · 14 Feb 1995
The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
by Russell Gold · 7 Apr 2014 · 423pp · 118,002 words
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
by Dava Sobel · 25 May 2009 · 363pp · 108,670 words
The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution
by Henry Schlesinger · 16 Mar 2010 · 336pp · 92,056 words
Utopias: A Brief History From Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities
by Howard P. Segal · 20 May 2012 · 299pp · 19,560 words
The Latte Factor: Why You Don't Have to Be Rich to Live Rich
by David Bach and John David Mann · 6 May 2019 · 146pp · 34,934 words
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
by Clive Thompson · 11 Sep 2013 · 397pp · 110,130 words
The Fear Index
by Robert Harris · 14 Aug 2011 · 312pp · 91,538 words
The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means
by Jeff Yeager · 8 Jun 2010 · 189pp · 64,571 words
Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities
by Diana Leafe Christian · 1 Jan 2003
The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World
by Sarah Stewart Johnson · 6 Jul 2020 · 400pp · 99,489 words
Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity
by Edward Tenner · 8 Jun 2004 · 423pp · 126,096 words
Halting State
by Charles Stross · 9 Jul 2011 · 350pp · 107,834 words
I'm a stranger here myself: notes on returning to America after twenty years away
by Bill Bryson · 6 Jun 2000 · 303pp · 93,545 words
Who Needs the Fed?: What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America's Central Bank
by John Tamny · 30 Apr 2016 · 268pp · 74,724 words
The Turing Option
by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky · 2 Jan 1992 · 532pp · 140,406 words
The Interior Design Handbook
by Frida Ramstedt · 27 Oct 2020
After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul
by Tripp Mickle · 2 May 2022 · 535pp · 149,752 words
The Passenger: Berlin
by The Passenger · 8 Jun 2021 · 199pp · 63,724 words
I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel
by Tom Wolfe · 9 Nov 2004
Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
by Varun Sivaram · 2 Mar 2018 · 469pp · 132,438 words
The Fran Lebowitz Reader
by Fran Lebowitz · 8 Nov 1994 · 208pp · 67,890 words
Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation
by Tom McGrath · 3 Jun 2024 · 326pp · 103,034 words
Shampoo Planet
by Douglas Coupland · 28 Dec 2010
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
by Pedro Domingos · 21 Sep 2015 · 396pp · 117,149 words
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood · 5 May 2003
Daemon
by Daniel Suarez · 1 Dec 2006 · 562pp · 146,544 words
Wireless
by Charles Stross · 7 Jul 2009
Jennifer Morgue
by Stross, Charles · 12 Jan 2006
Toast
by Stross, Charles · 1 Jan 2002
Dhalgren
by Samuel R. Delany · 31 Dec 1973 · 1,212pp · 312,349 words
David Mitchell: Back Story
by David Mitchell · 10 Oct 2012 · 335pp · 114,039 words