![]() (Palo Alto, Calif.) received the IEEE Corporate Innovation Recognition honor in June 1989 for "the creation, development and introduction of the first full-function, shirt-pocket-sized, scientific calculator"- the HP-35.įorbes ASAP magazine called the HP-35 one of the twenty products that changed the modern world. The ubiquitous slide-rule was obsolete within a year the HP-35 could do all the functions of the slide-rule to ten digit precision and determine the decimal point or power of 10 exponent through a full two hundred decade range. The HP-35 was truly a product which you knew would be successful because the engineer at the next bench wanted it. A clock rate of 200 KHz was sufficiently high to calculate a transcendental function within a second. The product had an arithmetic and register chip, control and timing circuit and several ROMs. The result could be displayed as either a signed mantissa and two signed exponent digits or variable length fixed point. The fourteen digits would just be sufficient for ten digit accuracy with an overflow or carry digit and two guard digits while still retaining sign information throughout the algorithmic iterations. The microcode word length was 11 bits during final development shortened to 10 by having only an inferred conditional branch, a ten percent reduction in circuitry was significant at the time. The solid state laboratory was also working on LED displays with molded encapsulated lenses for magnification driven by low power bipolar driver circuits.īy 1970 a PMOS architecture looked promising as a candidate for scientific algorithms a binary coded decimal (BCD) adder and 13 digit plus sign (56 bit) long multiple words in a serial circulating shift register (race track) arrangement that was very efficient of both chip size and power. However this didn’t stop Bill Hewlett from getting the Industrial Design group of HP Labs to mock up some ideas of shape, key layout, etc. Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) promised high density and low power but was still in its infancy. Every few months he would walk into the corporate labs and ask how the team was doing? He stressed how important it was to get the calculating power of the desktop in his fingers.Īlthough semiconductor density was increasing yearly, bipolar technology was never going to be suitable, too power hungry and not small enough. The HP-35 was the innovative culmination of mechanical design, state-of-the-art technology, algorithm development and application all unique at the timeĪfter the development of the HP-9100 desktop scientific calculator in the mid 1960s, Bill Hewlett, president of Hewlett-Packard envisioned the idea that HP could develop the same capability that would fit in his shirt pocket. Three to five hours of continuous use could be expected from a fully charged battery pack. This invention revolutionized the profession by allowing the engineer to make almost instantaneous, extremely accurate scientific calculations, at his home, office or in the field. The HP-35 performed all the functions of the slide rule to ten-digit precision over a full two-hundred-decade range.ĭeveloped by Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California at 1501 Pagemill Road and introduced in 1972, the HP-35 was the first full-function, shirt-pocket-sized, scientific calculator. The HP-35 and subsequent models have replaced the slide rule, used by generations of engineers and scientists. Most contemporary calculators could only perform the four basic operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. ![]() The HP-35 was the first handheld calculator to perform transcendental functions (such as trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions). IEEE Regions 6 IEEE sections Santa Clara Valley Achievement date range 1972 Development of the HP-35, the First Handheld Scientific Calculator, 1972 Date Dedicated 4 Dedication # 82 Location Palo Alto, California, U.S.A. ![]()
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