Why even bother?

I love well made electronic gadgets and the HP-12C is a very good example of just one. It was conceived and planned at the start of the 1980's and it is still current today, granted by todays standards the processor is a little slow, but the chap Dennis Harms, who led the team designing this calculator, who was told by Mister Hewlett himself to "not fuck it up" mentioned that, in todays age, we dispose of obsolete phones on almost a yearly basis and here is a calculator that has now endured almost forty years of useful life.

You can go to a dollar or a thrift store and buy a scientific calculator for next to nothing nowadays and it is all part of our throwaway society that we have somehow arrived at, stuff is not designed to last nowadays. Therefore, why even bother making that stuff out of quality materials that will endure.

So, the question to myself is "why even bother?" with a vintage calculator that, to most people, has an odd operating system in the form of reverse polish notation, or RPN. It comes down to something very simple and that is I want to continue learning how to do things, and that was true back in the middle of 1994 when I bought my first RPN calculator, the magnificent HP-42S and subsequently I went "all in" by buying the HP-48GX graphic calculator.

The HP-48GX was all I needed for the remaining thirteen years of my engineering career, and it is true that one of the most important aspects of those years was my ability to create programs on that calculator that would make my working life easier.

In retirement, there is little major use for a calculator, so I reason that if I do not bother, then the particular blob of grey matter that I used when I was working will simply erode away, to the point where it won't work, or my own personal version of non-volatile memory will no longer retain variables. It is that reason now, not to make things easier as I get older, but in a way, to present learning challenges to myself to attempt to exercise my brain and stall the inevitable downward spiral.

That's why I bother. 

Ebay Arrivals August 2020

This is just one of the arrivals this month, I'm always searching for things that I can buy with my "eBay dollars" that I gain from selling various things. It gives me guilt free pocket money that burns a hole in my pockets, and I decided I would travel down the RPN rabbit hole once again and purchase one of the most significant calculators in the HP lineup.

That is Hewlett Packard from "back then" and not the company it is nowadays.

The above unit is the HP-12C Financial calculator, it is a Voyager model, introduced in 1981 with an estimated life span, by the project team, of two years. In defiance of that projection the model has become HP's longest and best-selling product, in continual production since its introduction. This almost mint example cost me C$35.90 including shipping, from a Canadian seller.

The serial number on the HP-12C is 3425S03298 which means that it was built in (1960)+34 = 1994 and in week 25 in the Singapore facility. The 03298 is the unit number so there are a few fun nerdy facts for you.

A little personal history is in order regarding my interest in the RPN calculators and it was from my 1985 stint at McDonnell Douglas in California. I was so impressed at the time by the HP-11C and the HP-15C Scientific calculators that I was standing in a store in Long Beach about to buy the cheaper HP-11C (it was on sale at around US$75) and I rationalized I could "amortize" the cost into my expenses at the time.  

History shows that I walked out of that camera store without a calculator.

Nine years would pass before I would buy my first RPN calculator, and I felt at the time that I had wasted a lot of time using tradional "algebraic" units, but finally my "Reverse Polish Notation" days had arrived (complete with steep learning curve). 

The impact on my generation of handheld calculators is huge, I started as an apprentice in 1974 and was advised to buy British Thornton draughtsman instruments and a slide rule, within eighteen months we were all encouraged (by the Ford Motor Company) to leave the slide rule behind and buy a CBM (Commodore Business Machines) SR7919 Scientific Calculator, and the company allowed us to have the cost deducted from our pay slips over twenty weeks.

I still have one of those too.

I'll talk more about calculators, and eBay acquisitions, in future posts.