HP calculators are various

calculators An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-siz ...

manufactured by the

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

company over the years. Their desktop models included the

HP 9800 series The HP 9800 is a family of what were initially called programmable calculators and later desktop computers that were made by Hewlett-Packard, replacing their first HP 9100 calculator. It is also named "98 line". The 9830 and its successors were ...

, while their handheld models started with the

HP-35 The HP-35 was Hewlett-Packard's first pocket calculator and the world's first ''scientific'' pocket calculator: a calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions. It was introduced in 1972. History In about 1970 HP co-founder Bill He ...

. Their focus has been on high-end scientific, engineering and complex financial uses.

History

In the 1960s,

was becoming a diversified

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

company with product lines in electronic

test equipment Test equipment is a general term describing equipment used in many fields. Types of test equipment include: Electrical and electronic test equipment Electrical test equipment * Battery tester, used to test the state of an electric battery * Contin ...

, scientific instrumentation, and

medical electronics Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare applications (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic purposes). BME also integrates the logica ...

, and was just beginning its entry into

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

s. The corporation recognized two opportunities: it might be possible to automate the instrumentation that HP was producing, and HP's customer base were likely to buy a product that could replace the

slide rule A slide rule is a hand-operated mechanical calculator consisting of slidable rulers for conducting mathematical operations such as multiplication, division, exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry. It is one of the simplest analog ...

s and

adding machine An adding machine is a class of mechanical calculator, usually specialized for bookkeeping calculations. Consequently, the earliest adding machines were often designed to read in particular currencies. Adding machines were ubiquitous office ...

s that were being used for computation. HP-35 Red Dot

With this in mind, HP built the HP 9100 desktop scientific calculator. This was a full-featured calculator that included not only standard "adding machine" functions but also powerful capabilities to handle

floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a Sign (mathematics), signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some Radix, base) multiplied by an integer power of that ba ...

numbers,

trigonometric functions In mathematics, the trigonometric functions (also called circular functions, angle functions or goniometric functions) are real functions which relate an angle of a right-angled triangle to ratios of two side lengths. They are widely used in all ...

, logarithms, exponentiation, and square roots. This new calculator was well received by the customer base, but William Hewlett saw additional opportunities if the desktop calculator could be made small enough to fit into his shirt pocket. He charged his engineers with this exact goal using the size of his shirt pocket as a guide. The result was the

calculator. This calculator provided functionality that was revolutionary for a pocket calculator at that time. HP-41CV Calculator

Through the years, HP released several calculators that varied in their mathematical capabilities, programmability, and I/O capabilities. Some of them could be used (via

HP-IL The HP-IL (''Hewlett-Packard Interface Loop'') was a short-range interconnection bus or network introduced by Hewlett-Packard in the early 1980s. It enabled many devices such as printers, plotters, displays, storage devices (floppy disk drives a ...

) to control the instruments other Hewlett Packard divisions produced. On 1 November 2021, Moravia Consulting spol. s r.o. (for all markets but the Americas) and Royal Consumer Information Products, Inc.Office supply
hpcalcs.com (for the Americas) became the licensees of

HP Development Company, L.P. HP Inc. is an American multinational information technology company with its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, that develops personal computers (PCs), printers and related supplies, as well as 3D printing services. It is the world's sec ...

to continue the development, production, distribution, marketing and support of any HP-branded calculators.

Characteristics

HP calculators are well known for their use of

reverse Polish notation Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as reverse Łukasiewicz notation, Polish postfix notation or simply postfix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators ''follow'' their operands, in contrast to prefix or Polish notation ...

(RPN). Programmable HP calculators allow users to create their own programs.

Calculators

Below are some of HP's handheld calculator models produced over the years:

References

External links

HPMuseum.org
Museum of slide rules and significant HP calculators
HPCalc.org
Information about and software for HP programmable calculators * — HP Handheld Conference videos 2011–
MyCalcDB
HP calculators list.

Articles and programs for classic HP calculators
Programmable Calculators
Pictures, specifications, and details for most HP calculator * Th
HPDATAbase
a collection of data about all HP calculators * . Community driven wiki about HP calculators and related resources. * * — A comprehensive collection. *

Simulators

JRPN HP15C and HP16C Simulators
for Android, Linux, Windows, MacOS and Web with free source
HP12C Simulator
Web based
HP15C Simulator
for Windows (XP and following), Mac OS X (Intel) and Linux (x86)
HP25C Simulator
for Windows NT/2K/XP and Vista (32 bit only)
HP29C Simulator
for Windows NT/2K/XP and Vista (32 bit only)
HP33C Simulator
for Windows NT/2K/XP and Vista (32 bit only)
HP67 Simulator
for Windows NT/2K/XP and Vista (32 bit only)

for Windows XP and Vista (32 bit only)
Nonpareil free source HP simulator set
for Linux, and Windows
nonpareil
for Mac OS X
debug4x
?

for Unix machines
HP emulators
for the PC
HP page of Christoph Giesselink

* Th

list includes many simulators
HP Calculator emulators, 12c, 15c, 42s, 48GX, etc.
for iPhone and iPad (by various developers) {{HP calculators