RIP
HP 48GX
11 June 1999 - 15 June 2010
I've been a firm fanatic of RPN calculators since I purchased my first HP calculator, an HP-28S, in 1989. For the last 21 years I've used HP calculators at work and for school. Yesterday my third HP calculator (an HP 48GX) sadly became crippled by the loss of ON button function. My constant companion at work for the last eight years and for three years before that is now retired.
RIP
HP-28S
September 1989 - June 1999
The HP 48GX is my third HP calculator, as I mentioned previously I formerly owned a HP 28S (RIP 1989-1998). Despite the smaller screen, of all the HP's I've owned or used the HP-28S was the most functional and had the best ergonomic design. Sadly, it died when my apartment flooded. The high humidity caused corrosion of one of the batteries which leaked and rendered the calculator non-functional. The ON button was getting flaky by then though. My only complaint with the calculator was the odd battery choice by HP, three N-cell batteries which were always a pain to find.
RIP
HP 32S
July 1999 - April 2001
While I was in university from 1999 to 2001 I also concurrently owned an HP-32S. Due to the unreasoning prejudice the university faculty had towards programmable calculators I purchased this seemingly non-programmable calculator. It was actually minimally programmable, you could store one small program in it, I generally had the quadratic formula stored in it and could reprogram it in about a minute. One of my prof's actually had one and required me to clear the memory before each exam. I was actually quite heartbroken when it suffered an accident on the move home from university. The ON button on this calculator was getting a bit flaky.
Sometime next week I shall become acquainted with the latest and greatest in a long line of fabulous (and fabulously overpriced) calculators, the HP 50G.
Hopefully, the ON button is a little more robust than on the last three!
Last time I checked, my HP28S worked.
ReplyDeleteMy digital camera provides the sage warning to do any long term storage sans batteries. I find this 'will leak crap all over' flaw of modern batteries to be rather tragic - I'd have thought they could work around that outcome by now.
I loved my HP-28S. It introduced me to the concept of a calculator being able to calculate the square root of a negative number. And that was cool!
Plus RPN was awesome. Rob and Ken were disciples too, as was Jim and perhaps Kevin.
I remember Kevin's 28S with picture of Spider-Man painted on the front.
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