HP 12C English Calculator(hp.com)
hp.com
HP 12C English Calculator
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-12c-english-calculator
38 comments
Good list. I’d add the following:
* Requires virtually no system administration.
It seems like every other piece of technology needs some setup, backups, periodic updates, or fiddling when something inevitably goes wrong.
If I’m not mistaken the 12C doesn’t have a clock. Thus, it doesn’t need to be updated 2x a year for Daylight (Summer) time, nor to have its time zone tables updated. It doesn’t need a clock; there are plenty of other ways for me to find the time, thank you. Not having a clock is a feature! Too many devices have a clock that cannot be disabled. A clock that is set wrong is worse than no clock at all. Thus, a device with an unnecessary clock demands my periodic attention to ensure the clock is set correctly.
About the only system administration necessary for the 12C is to replace the batteries. The batteries last for a very long time. As noted above, the 12C operates for a long time in a low battery condition, so you can choose to change the batteries when it’s convenient to do so.
* Requires virtually no system administration.
It seems like every other piece of technology needs some setup, backups, periodic updates, or fiddling when something inevitably goes wrong.
If I’m not mistaken the 12C doesn’t have a clock. Thus, it doesn’t need to be updated 2x a year for Daylight (Summer) time, nor to have its time zone tables updated. It doesn’t need a clock; there are plenty of other ways for me to find the time, thank you. Not having a clock is a feature! Too many devices have a clock that cannot be disabled. A clock that is set wrong is worse than no clock at all. Thus, a device with an unnecessary clock demands my periodic attention to ensure the clock is set correctly.
About the only system administration necessary for the 12C is to replace the batteries. The batteries last for a very long time. As noted above, the 12C operates for a long time in a low battery condition, so you can choose to change the batteries when it’s convenient to do so.
Being able to see the input and the output on a screen is nice though. Then I can check if the answer is wrong because of a typo in the input. I'll take a graphing calculator for the money any day, and not for the graphs.
Vaguely related: Canon X Mark I, mouse + calculator in one. I saw some people in finance using this and they really liked it (afaik works with SAP and Excel too) https://www.canon.com.hk/en/product/catalog/productItemDetai...
I still have my HP 11C, the engineering equivalent, from my school days. It is still a joy to use, the build quality, the feel of the keys, the RPN system. The thing is almost 40 years old and it looks like new.
Sure, it’s totally anachronistic but the heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Sure, it’s totally anachronistic but the heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of.
I still have an HP 11C on my desk. Still running on coin cells from the previous century.
The 12C is used because it can directly calculate present value, which is an integral over an interest rate. That's a non-trivial calculation that everyone who deals with the time value of money needs.
The 12C is used because it can directly calculate present value, which is an integral over an interest rate. That's a non-trivial calculation that everyone who deals with the time value of money needs.
Same here, only I have a 15C. Still works perfectly. I think I have changed the batteries in it twice since I got it around 1984 despite using it regularly. I swear it is solar powered.
I own one, and the way it works suits loan and interest calculations to a t. I has a niche, but within it it is the defacto standard. I encourage everyone to learn RPN!
SwissMicros (not affiliated) has nice clones of many HP calculator models.
https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm42
https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm42
No one has mentioned that this calculator is programmable. The programming is keystroke with gotos and simple x=0 branching. It’s absurdly useful and easy to use.
It's remarkable that the finance crowd is so attached to this anachronistic tool. It's almost as if the C-64 were the favorite tool for writers, and Commodore still made it just because of that.
But then, the life and blood of the global financial system runs on Excel, so I'm not sure why I would be surprised by this.
In retrospect, we should have gotten them addicted to Lisp machines and Silicon Graphics workstations ;-)
But then, the life and blood of the global financial system runs on Excel, so I'm not sure why I would be surprised by this.
In retrospect, we should have gotten them addicted to Lisp machines and Silicon Graphics workstations ;-)
> It's almost as if the C-64 were the favorite tool for writers, and Commodore still made it just because of that.
Many lawyers in America still use WordPerfect, and I suspect Corel still makes and updates it for that reason :-)
I've heard from WordPerfect fans that it gives much more precise and reliable control over formatting than Microsoft Word, very important for picky court clerks and judges. WordPerfect also has a "reveal formatting codes" function, the equivalent of showing the HTML tags or Markdown syntax in line with the formatted result.
I haven't used WordPerfect in years, not since some WYSIWYG version for DOS (6?), so I don't have a personal opinion on whether it still deserves its popularity today.
Many lawyers in America still use WordPerfect, and I suspect Corel still makes and updates it for that reason :-)
I've heard from WordPerfect fans that it gives much more precise and reliable control over formatting than Microsoft Word, very important for picky court clerks and judges. WordPerfect also has a "reveal formatting codes" function, the equivalent of showing the HTML tags or Markdown syntax in line with the formatted result.
I haven't used WordPerfect in years, not since some WYSIWYG version for DOS (6?), so I don't have a personal opinion on whether it still deserves its popularity today.
> Many lawyers in America still use WordPerfect, and I suspect Corel still makes and updates it for that reason :-)
IIRC, that's because Word can't do footnotes (or something like that) the way lawyers need to do them, but WordPerfect can.
IIRC, that's because Word can't do footnotes (or something like that) the way lawyers need to do them, but WordPerfect can.
It seems odd that Microsoft hasn’t added whatever this feature is.
No, false. I was a lawyer once. Lawyers under ... 60 use Word. Courts up North get all kinds of horribly formatted dreck, but it could be worse. In the South, they get keyboard fonts but justified. In California, they get filings on paper with line numbers on the left that are strangely unaligned with the lines of text.
The only court I know that is truly finicky about formatting is the US Supreme Court, but they have sensible rules, like requiring Century, and book-width lines for actual readability.
The only court I know that is truly finicky about formatting is the US Supreme Court, but they have sensible rules, like requiring Century, and book-width lines for actual readability.
> but they have sensible rules,
Are those rules published somewhere?
Are those rules published somewhere?
I can sell you one out of my desk drawer for half that :-)
The interesting thing is that they do what they do well, "boot" instantly, and can be carried in the pocket. When a company I was with was being acquired pretty much every one of the auditors had one of these in their pocket. They knew exactly what sequence of presses would answer the question they needed answer.
The interesting thing is that they do what they do well, "boot" instantly, and can be carried in the pocket. When a company I was with was being acquired pretty much every one of the auditors had one of these in their pocket. They knew exactly what sequence of presses would answer the question they needed answer.
That's pretty important. When I needed a mortage last year, I wrote a small mortgage app (in Swift). While it's useful if you always need to enter the same set of numbers, a more flexible app would come with all kinds of UX problems: do I make it fast or do I guide the user? Do I try to cram all time based finances in the same interface, or are there different pages? Etc. And all of a sudden, it has become too complex for lay users, and too unwieldy for frequent users. A simple app suits the former, a calculator that only needs a few presses the latter. If everyone has the same device, even better.
We're not far: I spend most of my day pushing text streams around in a terminal. Vi(m) and Emacs are still two of the most popular editors.
> Vi(m) and Emacs are still two of the most popular editors
They are the two I use most frequently, but I don't think they are popular outside our niche.
It kills me to see programmers on Windows using Notepad++.
They are the two I use most frequently, but I don't think they are popular outside our niche.
It kills me to see programmers on Windows using Notepad++.
> It kills me to see programmers on Windows using Notepad++.
It kills me to see programmers on Windows using Notepad.
It kills me to see programmers on Windows using Notepad.
Given how many use their powerful computers as if trapped in time with a UNIX V6, working in a green phosphor (or orange) terminal, I am not surprised.
Alternative version: HP 12C Platinum Calculator (https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-12c-platinum-calculator)
The problem with the 12c Platinum, is that it was a "ground-up" rewrite, and is actually slower than the early 80s 12c.
It’s slower? Any proof of that? I believe it is slower than the most recent revision of the 12C, but it’s certainly faster than the original 12C. The Platinum has many more registers which I find outweighs the improved speed of the current 12C. The stack push behavior of the Platinum also helps make programs a little shorter from my experience.
So the choices are "English" or "Platinum"? I guess English is a color scheme and/or material?
I think English just refers to the language for the package labels and manual. Nothing to do with the calculator itself.
> I think English just refers to the language for the package labels and manual. Nothing to do with the calculator itself.
They should make a calculator that works with English natural language numbers:
They should make a calculator that works with English natural language numbers:
compute eight plus four
twelveThey do, it's called "COBOL."
At first I thought it referred to the comma as a decimal separator, but then I remembered the English also use a period.
A great app that emulates this calculator is vacinno financial calc
Nostalgia sells! There’s something so innocent about this. I often fall prey to it myself, that or restoring videos on YouTube.
Did anyone have the HP-16C? I was wondering what it had and if its features are in any of the other calculators?
I have a modern clone, the Swiss Micros DM-16L. Clone-wise, the display is better, the keyboard is worse, the software is emulated and faster.
Useful when doing embedded programming, it's great at duplicating the behavior of actual machine instructions. Buttons for things like and, or, xor, not, shift, etc. You set your word size, then poke through calculations and get the same overflow/carry behavior, even with offbeat representations like 7 bit 2's complement.
You can put it into a human-compatible fixed point mode to do normal math. It's fine for some things that way, but no exponents or trig or scientific notation, barely more than 4 function really.
Many of the newer RPN HP calculators include these functions, however all the computer math things are done with multi-button soft key presses or menu selections instead of dedicated buttons.
I also have a TI Programmer. Inferior from a practical point of view, as it has many fewer functions. But it's fun to play with as it has one of those early red LED displays.
Useful when doing embedded programming, it's great at duplicating the behavior of actual machine instructions. Buttons for things like and, or, xor, not, shift, etc. You set your word size, then poke through calculations and get the same overflow/carry behavior, even with offbeat representations like 7 bit 2's complement.
You can put it into a human-compatible fixed point mode to do normal math. It's fine for some things that way, but no exponents or trig or scientific notation, barely more than 4 function really.
Many of the newer RPN HP calculators include these functions, however all the computer math things are done with multi-button soft key presses or menu selections instead of dedicated buttons.
I also have a TI Programmer. Inferior from a practical point of view, as it has many fewer functions. But it's fun to play with as it has one of those early red LED displays.
1. "Communicate information without taking the user out of their environment or task". The display shows a single number: either the answer to your question or your current input. I don't need to worry about running out of battery or charging it, as I only need to once every few years. I don't need to think about my 12C except when I need to answer a finance question. I don't need to turn it off "correctly", I just turn it off.
2. "Gives people what they need to solve their problem, and nothing more". Basic math plus special purpose finance functions. No notifications, input history, cloud saves, Share button, upsells, political statements or otherwise claim they're making the world better, achievements or pretty but functionless UI.
3. "Moves easily from the periphery of our attention, to the center, and back". When I'm discussing a scenario, I don't need to sit down at a computer and design a spreadsheet. The functions in 12C are concise and operate quickly, showing the answer to one question at a time.
4. "Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity". 12C doesn't use ML to guess poorly what the user is trying to do, suggesting autocompletes and "are you sure" or "you mean...". It respects that the user knows what they're doing.
5. "Technology can communicate, but doesn’t need to speak". The display on 12C is minimal but shows everything you _need_ to know: the single number in front of you.
6. "Technology should work even when it fails". It either works or doesn't, no incorrect numbers reported, no missing functionality. Even when the battery dies, it will give me ample opportunity to do something about it before it actually happens, as the display dims gradually over weeks.
7. "The right amount of technology is the minimum needed to solve the problem".
8. "Technology should respect social norms". The 12C can be at the center of a conversation, and even help move a conversation forward by answering questions; I don't need to bury my face in a laptop while talking with someone, so it doesn't look like I'm ignoring them or that I've shifted my attention elsewhere; while I'm typing in numbers, it's obvious they're the numbers we're talking about. It respects the norms/customs of the field their customers work in: no need to type enter formulas for PV, FV, IRR.
[0]: https://calmtech.com/