[Turtle]

Xm took a little liberty with calling it the first hand held calculator, I think. There were several hand held calculators that hit the market in 1971, in several different stages of new technology, but they all rapidly became the small pocket calculators that we know today, with LED displays, replaceable batteries, 8-12 digit displays, etc. One of the first mass produced pocket calculators was the Bowmar 901B (the Bowmar Brain). My dad had one. It was a four function calculator (add, subtract, multiply, divide) and sold for $250, I think.

The one they're talking about on XM is the first fully scientific held held, the Hewlett-Packard HP-35 and sold for $395, and was the first pocket calculator with scientific functions like scientific notation, squares, square roots, reciprocals, including trig and log functions. The SR-10 (SR standing for Slide Rule) did all that, except the trig and log functions. Texas Instruments came out with the SR-50 to better compete with the HP-35. A few years later they came out with the TI-30, which is still in production.


35 years from now, I think we'll be able to buy a calculator in a dollar store, and get a good home computer for $600. Of course, the dollar store calculator will be able to do what Big Blue does now, and that $600 computer will be able to do things like manage the house and the security system, control the power consumption of every electrical appliance, pay our bills automatically and manage our finances, feed the plants and water the dog, keep track of our kids, control the video phones in every room, and on and on.