Reply With QuoteI got the HP 12c when I started my actuarial studies, and have used it ever since. I find RPN much quicker once you get the hang of it. Find my HP 21s slower in comparison. Enjoy !
I have just discovered the joys of using an RPN calculator. As a practising engineer for over 30 years why has no one told me about them? Or perhaps I am the last to find out. In fact I remember one eng I worked for a few years ago saying he used one and I thought "hmmm, that's nice dear" and moved on thinking he was a bit odd. My bad as it turns out.
Anyone else out there operating on this higher plain?
I am now programming it (in RPN) and having an indecent amount of fun.
My machine of choice is the HP35S - pretty hardcore.... Or is it?
I got the HP 12c when I started my actuarial studies, and have used it ever since. I find RPN much quicker once you get the hang of it. Find my HP 21s slower in comparison. Enjoy !
I bought an HP-12C in the early 1980s when I was in my first CFO job. I loved the RPN ("Reverse Polish Notation") logic. Better yet, no one else could figure out how to use my calculator, so it never got "lost." About 25 years ago I moved up to the HP-17BII, and I still use it today...it remains in mint condition.
Before the HP-12C, I used this "state-of-the-art" Canon Palmtronic LE-10 I bought in the early 1970s for over $200.00!
Last edited by pacifichrono; 28th February 2017 at 01:52.
I'm currently an undergraduate Chemistry student, do you think I should give an RPN calculator a go?
What would be the primary advantages?
Cheers
I was introduced to RPN as a young geologist back in the late 80's and have never looked back, cannot survive without it and now have the realcalc APP on my Android phone which is an RPN HP face.
Hi Sam,Originally Posted by Samjowen
Advantages: RPN takes fewer keystrokes, you get to see intermediate result during long string/complex calcs, no parentheses needed you just work from the inside out, keeps you more engaged with the actual maths and numbers you are doing, multiple live memories (the stack) help re use numbers already input. Thjis last one takes practice.
Spend some time looking at youtube tutorials (try "The Joys of RPN") and then have a go on virtual RPN calcs for practice. If you are a maths nerd (I am and proud) then you will love it.
It also appeals to the elitist in me : )
Steve
Nice kit! that Cannon is both charming and a little frightening : )I bought an HP-12C in the early 1980s when I was in my first CFO job. I loved the RPN ("Reverse Polish Notation") logic. Better yet, no one else could figure out how to use my calculator, so it never got "lost." About 25 years ago I moved up to the HP-17BII, and I still use it today...it remains in mint condition.
Before the HP-12C, I used this "state-of-the-art" Canon Palmtronic LE-10 I bought in the early 1970s for over $200.00!
This is a common vibe I am getting. Not many use it (but enough to justify HP still making them, clearly) but once introduced, most seem to use nothing else and many, like me, get a little evangelical about it.
Thanks very much for your reply
I prefer RPN and mainly use a HP-11C. I'd really like a Canon Palmtronic in the collection.
What a coincidence, I have this one up for trade / sale, though every time I get it out and use it I change my mind...
I've been using my HP48G since engineering school, amazing what we were able to do with that thing.
Now adays I hardly uses it for anything except for the most basic algorithmic. Somehow I've lost the ability to basic math in my head.
I couldn`t get on with RPN. I was always happier with a normal calculator, a scrap of paper and a pencil!
Whatever happened to log tables?......can anyone still remember how to use them?
Paul
Yes.
45 years ago, the only other calculator on the market offering a ten-digit display was HP at about $900 - - in 1970s $!. It was like buying a Patek!
This Canon is a 'beast.' This is one way to charge it:
Don't know why anyone would bother with an RPN calculator when it's so easy to type whatever you want into a calculator app on whatever computer you have...
Interesting from a CS pov, I suppose.
There were mains powered desk mounted units like my Nixie display Anita 1011 LSI dating from 1971, but I know what you mean.
I always think that RPN is a bit like Yoda speak. "Key in the operator after the operand, you must."
You would not be impressed by the fact that I also have and regularly use slide rules then? : O
The advantage of using older tech is that it forces you to be engaged and know what you are doing with the numbers. The problem with more advanced kit is that inexperienced users (and I am thinking of young CAD technicians that know how to drive Autocad but little about what they are drawing) is that they can produce output that is often junk, albeit rapidly and more easily obtained junk.
Ooooh....Nice!What a coincidence, I have this one up for trade / sale, though every time I get it out and use it I change my mind...
PM me if you are wanting to sell/trade that to someone who will cherish it
Steve
So right you are, Steve. Earlier generations lived and breathed with the 'heart' of numbers and mathematics, perhaps better able to grasp the dynamics better intuitively. But, 'burdened' down with these structures and relationships in our heads, maybe we are less agile in assimilating the latest technologies. My twenty-something sons are more unfettered by this old baggage.
An excellent point. Freeing up the mind from number crunching is a good thing particularly if you are trying to solve problems and be creative. The regrettable aspect of labour saving devices, speaking more broadly now, is that many people use this freed up brain processing power to just d*ck around on facebook and other social media ha ha.So right you are, Steve. Earlier generations lived and breathed with the 'heart' of numbers and mathematics, perhaps better able to grasp the dynamics better intuitively. But, 'burdened' down with these structures and relationships in our heads, maybe we are less agile in assimilating the latest technologies. My twenty-something sons are more unfettered by this old baggage.
And on a more basic level, the total inability to do the simplest mental arithmetic. I was always stunned that my staff in a bank did not have the faintest idea with numbers. So if changing foreign currency, and they put the decimal point in the wrong place they would pay out 10 x too much or 10 x too little...
I remember school days and slide rules, they made great air guitars - Pete Townsend, Steve Marriott.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Haha...my wife's BOSS has that affliction!
My grandfather (born in Sweden in 1889) was a railroad man in Wisconsin and a near-genius. He devised algorithyms and log tables to calculate the braking force needed by a train of "x" weight to stop in "y" distance. Then he physically designed and built about ten highly-crafted wooden slide rules that simplified his calculations, which he went on to patent. When I was in high school and college, slide rules were at the top of the personal technology heap (until I bought my Canon Palmtronic LE-10 a few years later!).
**PHOTO ADDED**
Last edited by pacifichrono; 1st March 2017 at 17:41.
Another RealCalc user here. I was so pleased to find it as I really missed my HP 41CV when the battery pack gave up the ghost. I did manage to get a few simple programs into it when I first got it and I used some of the proprietary ones, but that would be well beyond me these days.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, there is a short thread about Vintage calculators on the forum.
Last edited by PickleB; 28th February 2017 at 20:55.
Another actuary here! I see loads of HP12Cs in my office - an actuary's wet dream. For some reason, I've never made the move and still have a regular Casio calculator - odd for me as I usually like being part of the awkward squad. Those who do use RPN calculators swear by them; I just swear when I try to use them. :)
As I recall, the HPs can be toggled between RPN and traditional algebraic modes, at least my 17BII can.
My 11C can't, and I believe the same goes for the 15C: RPN only. Thank the Lord!
its scary going back to a normal calculator once your brain starts thinking in RPN...
I use a RPN calculator app. ;)
Best wishes,
Bob
Good to see you around Bob.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
My HP15C lives on my desk at home. I've got two 12Cs - one at work, and one that lives in my briefcase. I started when I was studying engineering.
I've also got a 17bII+ (from when I went to business school) but never really bonded with it.
I'm so out of touch with maths nowadays but had to use log tables, slide rules and when I first went to uni - the all new Sinclair Cambridge calculator. I love this thread!
Question for you engineers:
My youngest son is finishing his third year at university studying Construction Engineering. After he graduates and enters the work world, is he likely to need/want a high-end pocket calculator like the HP-35s, or not?
The ONLY time I was grateful that my 17BII could was once when a colleague had a work emergency and was caught without a calculator. I loaned him mine. He couldn't figure out the RPN, so I quickly switched it to algebraic.
When completing a course at Uni for my civil engineering degree, we had to write a program in our chosen field of origin. Most did it on the Uni computer where you still had to punch cards. A few did theirs on Apple II in Pascal.
I had access to but couldn't afford the Apple so used a Jupiter Ace and wrote my project in Forth. I would be totally incapable of writing one line now but the jury was mightily impressed that this little piece of crap plastic could pilot a dna sequencing machine.
For those who don't see the relevance, forth used the stacked entries like rpn.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Is it anything like fortran?
In a word, no. See here to get a taste of it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_...ming_language)
There are a few implementations still around but it's pretty niche nowadays. However anyone who enjoys using RPN will almost certainly relish programming in FORTH.
No. Fortran was a scientific programming language, but I never took to it as you could do most things more easily in Pascal (although with more lines of programming). Forth was supposed to be a Fourth génération language and was brilliant for its compact size but had its limitation as not everything can be solved by moving the stacks around. Details are sketchy as this was about 35 years ago and I never touched it again
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
There was a guy called Leo Brodie, who in today's terminology would be referred to as an 'evangelist for the technology'. He wrote a couple of books one called 'Starting Forth', the other 'Thinking Forth'. If you are at all interested I don't believe you will find a better, or more entertaining, introduction to the language.
Thanks all.
That name and title ring a bell. If they were around in 82/83 it might have been a constant reference.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Ditto, it may be me not paying attention but I haven't seen you (Bob) on here for quite a while.
One more to add to the RPN Cognosenti At this rate it might just catch on : )
Steve
Need one, definitely not,
want one, probably not.
I am a practising Structural Eng and have been happily using Scientific Casios, Texas Instruments and the like all my career. They can be had for £10 - £20 brand spanking new. Hard sums (tongue in check reference to structural analysis etc) are done using spreadsheets or specialist software.
RPN and particularly The HP 35s is dare I say it, at the Nerdy end of number crunching. And I do not use 'Nerd' in a prejorative sense. I am a self confessed Nerd regarding maths and physics - it goes with the job.
So Casio TI and all the other scientific calcs available in the high St are absolutely fine just like a Casio digital wrist watch will tell the time just fine.
The HP35s might be likened to a decent eta based auto diver say, and lets pitch it at about a Tudor for the sake of a brand ref. No one else gives a damn about how it does the job, but you do so you go for the mechanical watch which is harder to live with and costs more and need servicing, but you (that is 99% of us on here) are a WIS so you go for the time keeping solution that does not stand up to logical or finacial scrutiny.
Hope this helps and I apologise if at the end it started to rise to a rant like crescendo : 0
Steve
The one thing that made HP so valuable is that no one would borrow them, which means you'd always have it when needed.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
Pete, this has really caught my interest. Never heard of it but I am all over amazon looking for said books now. Paired down computer programming (lean and efficient) is elegant stuff.
Ay caramba! another niche interest. I haven't finished learning Morse Code yet!
Thanks, Steve. I was afraid you'd say that! My son is actually a "mild WIS," but not really a nerd. I was hoping I'd stumbled upon a perfect Christmas gift.
A female engineer I know solved the problem of people (men) 'borrowing' her calculator by buying a pink one. None of the men on site would even touch it let alone knick it. I think they must have been afraid of catching "gay" off it. And that isn't even a thing,.....is it?
The books mentioned are both freely available online: -
https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/
http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
Always prefer hard copies myself TBH.
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