Super Calculator: Happy Anniversary HP 35

I must have calculators on the mind. On the www.hpmuseum.com Web site, there’s quite a bit of discussion about the 35^th anniversary of the HP 35 calculator and the maybe soon-to-be introduced HP 35s anniversary model. Apparently, a foreign distributor jumped the gun and posted a PDF data sheet of the new machine, which has since disappeared from the distributor’s site and from www.hpcc.org but it lives on if only in the discussions at the www.hpmuseum.com site. Maybe there is such a beast. Maybe not.

So I was primed this morning when I walked into Walgreens and saw a giant calculator on sale for $3. I bought it, brought it home, and photographed it next to my original HP 35 scientific calculator. My $295 HP 35 got me through Circuits III in college, allowing me to iterate on test answers while dip-stick jockeys had, at most, one shot per problem. I’ve had many other calculators since then. My latest acquisition cost 100x less than the HP 35 and does less, but it’ll be great for those “big money” calculations.