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HP-35 Scientific Calculator
- Year
- 1972
- Creator
- Hewlett-Packard engineering team, at Bill Hewlett's urging
- Company
- Hewlett-Packard
- Location
- 1501 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, California
- Room
- Augmentation ↗
Description
The HP-35 was the first handheld calculator that could calculate trigonometric, logarithmic, and exponential functions. Hewlett-Packard introduced it in 1972, and it worked to 10-digit precision.
Importance
Most calculators of the time could only add, subtract, multiply, and divide, but the HP-35 did all the work of a slide rule. A few months earlier, Intel had started to sell the 4004, a processor that it first designed for a calculator. Engineers soon used the HP-35 in place of the slide rule.
Interesting fact
Hewlett-Packard required the HP-35 to survive a fall of 3 feet onto concrete on each of its corners.
Sources
- Milestones: Development of the HP-35, the First Handheld Scientific Calculator, 1972 ↗IEEE, Engineering and Technology History Wiki · 2009-04-14
- HP timeline: 1970s ↗Hewlett-Packard
- HP timeline: 2000s ↗Hewlett-Packard