I am not a calculator collector, I am not a calculator collector.

I am not a calculator collector.  I have to keep saying this to myself because I don't need another genre of items to collect, but I'm quite tempted by this since it is adjacent to retro computing.  I've managed to avoid printers (mostly), typewriters completely, and vintage test equipment, among many other interesting items that I would collect if time money and storage space were not limited.

So I have a few calculators.  I purchased a Radio Shack Pocket Computer 4 off Facebook Marketplace in 2020...

And since then I've been picking up interesting, older calculators from the 70s and 80s at Garage Sales and Thrift Shops when I can find them including a couple of hand held Casio units.  My parents had a Casio on their desk, it had a mesmerizing Nixie tube display and so although it was "portable / battery powered" it stayed plugged in and on the desk.  The Calculator Wars of the 70s were historically significant to the development of home computing as they occurred right before the home computer revolution and included many of the same companies.  Calculators were the "killer app" of Microprocessors before the home computer revolution began, but this is well covered elsewhere.

My personal calculator history started with my first graphing calculator, a TI-81.  My parents bought this for me while I was in high school and I spent quite a bit of time puttering with it and even wrote some simple programs to run on it.  I was recently able to reacquire a TI-81 from Free Geek Twin Cities and add that to my calculator not-a-collection.

My favorite calculator is the HP48G which got me through engineering school.  Back in the day we didn't have laptop computers for every student so pretty much everyone had an HP 48 of some sort.  It was hard to learn how to use it, but once I'd gotten the hang of it I can always come back to an RPN calculator, just like riding a bicycle, you never really forget how.  There's a review video from Calculator Culture on YouTube that I'd recommend, it has helped me understand why this calculator is so unique.

I wore out my initial 48G calculator.  I had tried to repair it at one point, but it was not designed for service and I ended up breaking mine.  I missed having it enough that about ten years ago I had purchased an HP50G calculator hoping that it would replace my worn out calculator, but I didn't like using it as much.  Another Calculator Culture review video explains this calculator well.  I ended up selling my HP50G as it didn't really match my expectations and was different enough from the 48 that is just didn't feel the same.

So after watching a few videos from HPcalc.org's recent conference and the Calculator Culture videos I realized that the best way to "Scratch the Itch" so to speak would be to just go ahead and buy an original HP48G.  With my new knowledge about the hardware revisions and the typical problems, I was hoping I could find a nice one on eBay at a reasonable price, and after waiting and shopping for a couple of weeks, I was able to find this lovely unit here...

I've paired it with the original manual set that I'd kept all these years.  I'm glad I kept the manual since there's alot I've forgotten about how to use the machine (the manual is hundreds of pages long).  As described in the review video above the LCD screen isn't great, the contrast is poor, although not being backlit means that the battery life is quite good.  The keyboard is amazing, the keys are clicky, very tactile and enjoyable to use.

I've enjoyed having this machine back at my desk, and I'm getting back into the habit of using it.  During my research I've also found a much more modern iOS app that emulates the 48.  I've used about a half dozen of these over the years since getting my first Smart Phone and this one is the most useful and stable, it's called iHP48 and it is much better than other iOS Apps that emulate HP 48 which I have used before.  This is the main calculator app on my phone now and I use it almost daily.

Doing the research about HP 48 and being exposed to other calculator collectors has helped me learn about the history and development of the handheld scientific calculator.  I've become aware of the first Handheld Scientific Calculator, the HP 35 from 1972.  But this is a story for another day, so I will wrap up this bLog post by simply stating the obvious, I am a calculator collector.