My first calculator was the HP-25C. I tried using a TI-59, which seemed more powerful, but it was much more awkward, and so I sold it to a friend. RPN made a huge difference to me. I progressed through all versions of the HP-41 as well as exploiting all of the extension modules and HP-IL devices. I bought an HP-86 computer. I still have a HP-28C and HP-42S. I gave my HP-49G to a friend (still using his own HP-41) when I bought a new HP-49G+. You are so right about the community of HP users. I belonged to the PPC from the beginning to its end. It was all about sharing information and enabling everybody to do what they wanted. For example, I learned synthetic programming on the HP-41. I do not need more than the built-in powerful user RPL today. Now I routinely search Internet sources of HP calculator information and news about developments. These calculators have always been professional tools for me. Fascinating tools, too. They got me through college courses and graduate school research projects. (For example, I obtained the 3-D atomic coordinates for half of the human hemoglobin molecule from Brookhaven National Laboratory, so I had to compute the other half by reflection matrices. A HP-41 program, and data backed up on the HP-IL cassette tape drive, made the work easy, safe, and secure.) Now when I have to refresh my memory about an old topic or wrestle to learn a new one, I still keep my HP 49G+ right next to my textbook. I am a trainer for a large software company and use computers daily to teach, for research, and to develop software solutions. I have powerful software tools, including Mathematica, but I still like to use my HP calculator because it is truly personal. It starts almost immediately, at the same point where I left it when I turned it off. It is highly customizable and extendable. A very organic and, again, personal device. Off the shelf, it distinguishes itself from other computing products because of its fully integrated nature, its completely cohesive environment. It might take twenty minutes to learn RPN and understand the 'mindset' of a HP calculator, but you really miss it almost at once when you try to use another kind of calculator or computer software that is only a collection of powerful features.

I'm interested in the last ten years' history of the calculator division inside of HP.

I know there was a time when a former CEO of HP announced that the calculator product line was to be discontinued, as it was no longer profitable. (I remember this, because I read the press release when she said it, and I saw all my friends from the Personal Computation Division go and find other jobs.) Fortunately, that shortsighted view of the calculator business did not prevail, and HP's calculators rose from the dead, but it was too late -- the group in Corvallis that had produced all of HP's great calculators up to that point was disbanded. A rumor circulated that the calculator effort went to Singapore, where it languished for many years. A "skunk works" group in Australia, made up of several very smart people from France, created the HP49 and a few of its successors, but it seemed that with little or no sales and marketing resources, HP had abandoned most of their calculator market niches to TI, the PC, or nobody.

Then it appeared that the calculator division had revived, outsourced all of their R&D work to Kinpo Electronics, an OEM whose primary efforts appeared to be in creating "plus", "II" or "B" versions of existing designs, and in upgrading the FW from Saturn-based code to ARM-based code.

It looked like HP's presence in the calculator marketplace was being maintained solely by that mighty mite, the HP12C, until HP calculator design went all the way back to its roots and, only last year, gave the world the HP35S.

This is all I have been able to discover, and it's not much. Wing, what else can you tell us that will help to fill in the blanks? I posted some questions on comp.sys.hp48, but nobody has responded to them, so it could be that nobody (outside of HP) knows what's going on.

Hello. I've got an HP-12C. I have a problem that I don't know how to solve. I've been presented with an investment that gives me 16% return on the first year. Then, I will earn 3% from years 2 through 14. What is the average annual interest rate at the end of 14 years? Could you please walk me through the function keys to arrive at the answer? Also, I don't think average annuall interst rate is the correct name, am I looking for a nominal rate, an IRR, an effective rate? What is the proper terminology? Thanks.