Ebay arrival

This is another arrival this month, plus there are more on the way for my musings.

Another Hewlett Packard from the history pile, this one a faster business calculator that can be set as RPN or Algebraic entry. The HP-17B II which was introduced at the start of 1988, coincidently on the day we emigrated to Canada.

It is a Pioneer model, introduced in 1988 and the serial number is 3544S09832 which means that it was built in (1960)+35 = 1995 and in week 44 in the Singapore facility. The 09832 is the unit number which is a little spooky as the unit number from the HP-12C was 03298

The age difference between the HP-12C and this unit is approximately one year and nineteen weeks, and they were made in the same facility. The technology however is six years advanced and it shows when running the simple TVM calculation we have been discussing. The calculation is almost instant on the HP-19B II, perhaps half a second, whereas the older HP-12C takes about three times as long.

It was progress, and there were a great many improvements in the HP-17B II including many more functions, a built in clock and a powerful algebraic solver.

However, by the time this was released the real estate industry had adopted the HP-12C as the trendy desktop accessory, and no future business calculator would break its hold. Later variants of the HP-12C would be made with faster processors and it is still sold, albeit "Made in China" to this day.