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40th anniversary of HP calculator
February 25, 2008
This makes me feel old. As Steve Leibson reports, “This year marks the 40th anniversary of HP’s entry into the calculator market…. First came the HP 9100A (with no ICs except in the magnetic card reader) and then, a few years later when IC technology matured, came the HP 35. (Last year was the 35th anniversary of the HP 35’s introduction.)”
Steve says that many people contributed to the calculator’s introduction, but he notes that Tom Osborne
stands out: “He was never an HP employee, but he designed and built the prototype machine that was destined to be the foundation of HP’s first calculator, the HP 9100A. He tried selling the design to several companies including IBM, Friden, and HP. He failed. Then luck intervened and a former co-worker from SCM (Smith Corona Marchant) got him an audience with the legendary head of HP Labs, Barney Oliver. The rest, as they say, is history.”
Steve has a video interview with Osborne, posted on his blog, in which the two discuss how a Manhattan Project scientist inspired Tom to design a calculator; why SCM, Tom’s employer, didn’t get his calculator; how Tom developed a world-beating calculator in his apartment; how Hewlett and Packard ran their business and treated their competitors; and how the HP 35 came to be.
By the way, I couldn’t afford to be an early adopter (I believe a scientific calculator then cost more than $400, back when $400 was worth something!), but I was envious of the HP 35 that a classmate had purchased with, I believe, an income tax refund.
Posted by Rick Nelson on February 25, 2008 | Comments (6)
