Question for the science/engineering/accounting nerds

[pokerfan]

Does your calculator use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation">Postfix notation AKA Reverse Polish?

I've owned a bunch of HP calculators over the years but I'm still using one I bought back in 1981:



The Voyager Series were the smallest calculators HP ever made and the batteries last for years. I don't need a freaking graphing calculator. That's what MatLab and spreadsheets are for. I don't every physical constant and equation loaded in memory. That's what books are for.

Like most HP calculators of the time it had a very nice keyboard with excellent tactile response. It was well laid out making it easy to use. Unlike modern calculators, it has an a simple elegant design which is why the 12C is still being made today:



Accounting types simply refused to let it die. The sci/eng types simply rushed onto the latest offering from HP who now makes calculators with an 'equals' key. The horror.

I keep just one program loaded in my 15c, the Time Value of Money, which pretty much gives me all the financial functions I need.

And, oh yeah, I still have my first scientific calculator:



And yeah, I'm a nerd.

[cloudbase]

1. I've got one of those newfangled ones.

But I've also got my old K&E log log duplex decitrig slide rule. Never needs batteries. Back in the day, I received the following advice:

If you're going to be an engineer, buy the best slide rule you can, because you'll use it all of your professional life."

Who knew?

[pokerfan]

4. I still have a cheapo Pickett (yeah I know)

that I bought in high school. I was just on the tail end of the slipstick era. Bought the HP-25 as a freshman in college.

I bought a couple of K&E slide rules off of Ebay a while back because I think that they are elegant and a nifty way to teach logarithms.

[billyoc]

2. Nice. I use /usr/bin/dc

http://www.gnu.org/software/bc/manual/dc-1.05/html_mono/dc.html

[pokerfan]

5. Cool, that works

[Ptah]

3. I'm a machinist and some of our computerized machine tools use Reverse Polish.

In the shop the other day.

[pokerfan]

7. RPN is mostly an either/or thing I guess

But it keeps my calculator from growing legs cause so few people know how to use it.

I remember taking a material science course in college and having to evaluate these incredibly long expressions. The guys using the RPN machines were the only ones able to keep everything straight without getting confused, a stack being easier and more intuitive to manage than parenthesis.

[Ptah]

10. If I want to change a radius to a diameter,

2 * <enter>

[eppur_se_muova]

6. I had one of those -- 15C or close -- it "disappeared". :cry:

I still have (somewhere) my 29C programmable from 1977 -- *including* the stylish carrying case with belt loop.

49 programming steps. That was enough to find numerical roots of eighth-order polynomials (ninth-order if eighth-order coefficient was a small integer).

ON EDIT: The batteries failed a long time ago. I pried open the little (ultrasonically 'welded') battery pack and replaced the cells with new Nicads. They work just fine, despite not being exactly the right voltage.

[pokerfan]

8. My HP-16C "disappeared" from my first job

It was computer scientist version of the same series.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. That just proved how good they were!

Everyone wanted one, they just couldn't wait to buy their own.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. I miss my 41-C. I REALLY miss my 41-C...

It was stolen from my coat pocket while my coat was hanging up. I suppose what pisses me off more than anything else was that the thief wouldn't know who to sell it to without the instruction books so it ended up in a dumpster. Probably thought it was broken.

I see them on eBay every so often, and am tempted.

On another note, I got the Power Calculator from, of all places, MicroSoft and it does RPN:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

[pokerfan]

12. Had the 41 for a while

Even got into the synthetic programming thing but then desktop computers came out... and I found I just needed a small pocket calculator that was actually pocket sized.

[TreasonousBastard]

13. It was very handy for data collection...

I had short programs in there for everything from statistical things at work to calculating travel expenses. Nothing I couldn't so some other way, and the thing was pretty big for a pocket, but it was so damn convenient. Can't think of anything like it today. (My Palm didn't come close, even with the sorta spreadsheet.)

The programming was similar to FORTH, and gave me all sorts of fascinating options with direct memory addressing and stack manipulation. Real simple for this non-programmer once I the hang of it.

[TreasonousBastard]

14. It was very handy for data collection...

I had short programs in there for everything from statistical things at work to calculating travel expenses. Nothing I couldn't so some other way, and the thing was pretty big for a pocket, but it was so damn convenient. Can't think of anything like it today. (My Palm didn't come close, even with the sorta spreadsheet.)

The programming was similar to FORTH, and gave me all sorts of fascinating options with direct memory addressing and stack manipulation. Real simple for this non-programmer once I the hang of it.