Calculators -- a Collecting Hobby

I don't know what it is, or what bug I've caught, but I have a thing for calculators, especially programmable calculators.

In High School I had a couple of calculators (from Sharp), one was the El-5500II that was programmable with BASIC. That was cool. I wrote a root solver and would challenge the guys that had an HP 15c to a race (time based), and my stupid, simple little root solver won. I also wrote a lunar lander game that I would play during english or whatever other boring class I was in.

In 1985, I used my EL-5500II calculator's statistical capabilities to predict the score of the BYU v Utah St. football game using previous games and linear regression. The calculator said the score would be 44-7. The actual score was 44-0. I was rooting for USU to score a touchdown really bad. They got down to the BYU 7 yard line, but couldn't punch it in. Dang! Off by a single touchdown.

In short, calculators were fun to work with, and I was hooked.

My collecting officially started when a person I work with handed me an HP-45, and said I could keep it. It had a hard plastic case, the calculator (of course), charger, manual, and leather cover. It was in fantastic condition, and still is. I pulled it out, plugged it in, and started pushing numbers around. What a cool machine! Old HP calculators just have a feel about them hard to describe if you're not a calculator lover.

From that time on I was on the lookout for older programmable-like calculators. The model in the picture above is an HP 41-cv. It is very similar to the one I own, a 41-cx. Back in the day, the 41 (c, cv, and cx) were the "cat's meow" for engineers, teachers, scientists, etc. It has expansion ports to allow for more memory, programs to plug in (games, math, statistics, budget, stocks, etc.), and external device handling. It could do it all. There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of programs written for this machine.

Ebay, pawn shops, and friends from High School all became sources for enhancing my collection. I'll admit that the most I've paid for a calculator was the HP 42s on Ebay ($165). Actually that's not too bad of a price even today. I've seen that machine go for a whole lot more. The calculator was in absolutely perfect condition (everyone calls it 'mint' on Ebay), which was very cool.

Some people are scared off by HP's RPN (Reverse Polish Notation), but it's no big deal. Once you learn it, it's a piece of cake to use. HP's newer graphing/scientific calculators now offer users the ability to choose either algebraic or RPN entry (nice feature for those uncomfortable with RPN).

I've taken out all my calculators and counted them a few times, but I don't remember the tally. It is definitely over 100, but I can't remember the exact number. By and large, the vast majority of them are programmable. I have Casio, HP, Sharp, Canon, and a TI or two.

I'm always on the lookout for a good calculator. Even if my family thinks I'm a geek, they like it when my calculator can convert from liters to gallons in "one fell swoop."

I only wish they made them like they use to. HP still makes calculators, but they are not as good of quality as before. I like the new business one they have, the 20B, and their scientific/graphing calculators are nice, but not wonderful. The TI-89 Platinum is a good machine, HP needs to get its act together to compete against it. I would be hard pressed to choose against the TI model unless HP really fixes its off-shore calculator crap they're selling now.