The design team wound up moving to HP's plant in Corvallis, Ore., where the company was building a fabrication operation for a technology called complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS), which would reduce the 12c's power requirements. Anyone who wants to get it away from me has to practice first with something easier - like prying Charlton Heston's rifle out of his cold dead hands," posted Steve Finlay.ĭevelopment of the 12c started at HP's Advanced Product Division in Cupertino, Calif., where it wasn't uncommon for HP cofounder Bill Hewlett - who's known to have had a soft spot for calculators - to drop by the labs and check out new prototypes. "uh, your calculator is broken" b/c they don't know RPN! Owned mine for nearly 20 years still use it every day," posted a Facebook user by the name Ravi Nagarajan on the fan page HP 12c Dorks. "My favorite thing about the HP 12c? Loaning the calculator to someone and then having them say. Longtime devotees have found a home on Facebook, where they can heap praise on, and post tips related to, the HP 12c. But RPN wasn't a method that financial people were used to - not that it stopped them from embracing the 12c.
It's simpler and more efficient than standard algebraic notation, Harms says, and it doesn't require bigger, multi-line screens like complex algebraic entry does. Most significantly, the calculator uses Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), which is a technique that governs how the user inputs a formula into the calculator. Some of the design decisions that Harms and his team made were a gamble.
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I got to be the overall project manager for the 12c, which involved the electrical engineers, the mechanical engineers and the software people, which was pretty exciting." "I guess I did a good enough job with that, and I was promoted.
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I wrote the code for the calculators, too," recalls Harms, who's still with HP today.
One of the big things I did was working on the financial calculations, getting those accurate. "My first jobs were around working the math behind the buttons on the calculators. He was put in charge of creating a financial calculator that would be small enough fit in a shirt pocket, precise enough to exceed federal standards, and have a long battery life. Harms joined HP straight out of Iowa State, where he earned a PhD in numerical analysis. I have one in the office and two at home," says Dennis Harms, who was the original project manager for the 12c. "Very few dedicated 12c people only have one.
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