Voyager design history?

[naddy]

What do we know about the gestation of the Voyagers?

The hardware platform and function set of the 11C make such a perfect package that it seems obvious to me that this model was the primary design, and the other models were secondarily derived from it. The starting point appears to have been the goal to have all the functions of the 34C—minus the high-end SOLVE and ∫ features—but with enough keys for a more reasonable two shift levels rather than the 34C's three.

The 15C feels like somebody wedged additional functions into an 11C, and they promptly ran out of keyboard real estate, necessitating the TEST n and MATRIX n workarounds, the reuse of I and (i) for complex functions, Py,x and Cy,x for matrix transforms, and flag 8 for complex mode. So intuitive. Not. The presence of the C annunciator in the display shared by all Voyager models at least suggests that the decision was made early on to have a complex mode in the top model.

The 16C feels even more like somebody was handed the 11C chassis and told "just make it work".
"We need another annunciator letter." — "Too bad, you have to make do." — "Hey, can we switch on the G from GRAD/RAD on its own?" ­— "Genius!"

The 10C was a piece of artificial product differentiation, a crippled 11C, clearly driven by marketing. I can't comment on the 12C, except that history proves that it hit a very sweet spot in its niche.

So that's my thoughts. How well do they match up with known reality?

[Steve Simpkin]

Some HP-12C and Voyager Trivia:
From the HHC 2011 presentation by Dennis Harms on the HP-12Cs 30th anniversary. Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VitFi_KC8cQ

1:15 - The original anticipated product lifespan of the HP-12C was 2 years. They expected to replace it with a Saturn-based Pioneer series calculator shortly after that. They were off by 41 years (so far) with no end of HP-12C production in sight.

15:45- The HP-11C/HP-12C R&D team had 30 core people that developed theses two Voyager models over a 2.5-3 year period. Approx 250 people contributed to the project.

16:06 - [ paraphrasing ] The original design of the Voyager series was a “normal” vertical format like every calculator HP had made previously. Some of the design goals were that it had to fit easily into a shirt pocket and it had to withstand a 1 meter drop on all four corners (like all other HP calculators). Placing the LCD at the top of a vertical format calculator made it difficult to protect the LCD at this time without making the entire calculator bigger so they made in in a horizontal format to have more protection around the display.

The HP-12C has been in continuous production for over 43 years. Although the more recent models use a newer processor that emulates the original "Nut" processor, they are all running the same 44 year old firmware codebase.

[Steve Simpkin]

As a consultant, Professor William Kahan assisted Hewlett Packard with the mathematical functions of a number of its calculators over the years. His work work on algorithms included improving the accuracy of functions, increasing the performance of complex functions and adding to the feature-set of many HP models. As an interesting side note, Professor Kahan was instrumental in the development of the original HP-15C and its feature set. From the 2005 oral history listed below:

“Well, we could go on now with more of the Hewlett-Packard stuff because I had another ambition: the HP-15C. That was my ambition. I wanted to have a calculator that could be used by practically all engineering and most science students. And I wanted that calculator to be able to do all the math they were going to use up to their sophomore year except for divs, grads, and curls because on a calculator, you can’t really display regions and things like that. But you could certainly do everything else. You could do an awful lot of circuit calculation. You’d be able to do an awful lot of the calculation for the distortion of elastic structures in civil and mechanical engineering. You’d be able to solve some of the differential equations in kinematics for simple cases. You’d be able to do complex variables cases, so you could plot various flows. You know, I had a fair idea of the things that they have to learn, you see, up into their sophomore year. And I said, “I wanted a calculator that they could do all that stuff.” That would mean that professors like me could give them problems that were simultaneously more realistic and less tedious. And at that time, there weren’t personal computers in large numbers. Personal computers were a hobby.“

More about the work Professor Kahan did concerning the HP-15C and why HP did not sell as many of them as it could have is in the following 2005 oral history. His history with the HP-15C starts on page 151. The HP-15C Collectors Edition (and DM15L) is also running the original 1982 HP-15C firmware code with slight patches to accommodate more memory.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jlg9EWQ...sp=sharing

[Steve Simpkin]

For reference, the advanced features of the HP-15C calculator are described in the May 1983 issue of Hewlett-Packard Journal magazine (page 25). A PDF of this issue can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IrYfbFS...sp=sharing

The same issue has an article on the features of the HP-16C calculator (page 36).

[naddy]

(10-19-2024 10:05 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  For reference, the advanced features of the HP-15C calculator are described in the May 1983 issue of Hewlett-Packard Journal magazine (page 25). A PDF of this issue can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IrYfbFS...sp=sharing

Thanks! That article confirms that the 15C was built on top of the preceding 11C design:

Quote:Design Objectives
The HP-15C was designed with the following goals in mind:

• Provide all functions of the HP-11C and HP-34C Calculators in the same slim-line package used for the HP-11C
• Provide additional convenient, built-in advanced mathematical functions which are widely used in many technical disciplines.
  

Achieving the first objective posed a keyboard layout problem. The nomenclature for the HP-11C functions filled every position on the keyboard. [...]

[naddy]

(10-19-2024 10:04 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  As a consultant, Professor William Kahan assisted Hewlett Packard with the mathematical functions of a number of its calculators over the years.

I'll make a wild guess that he was the author of the "Accuracy of Numerical Calculations" appendix in the Advanced Functions Handbook. That part feels like it was written by a different author than the other parts.

Quote:More about the work Professor Kahan did concerning the HP-15C and why HP did not sell as many of them as it could have is in the following 2005 oral history.

Interesting, though I doubt that this scarcity persisted over the whole time the 15C was sold. So here's a personal piece of information: I know I bought my 15C sometime in 1987/88 (in a store either in Middlesboro, KY or Knoxville, TN). Yet it has a 2518Axxx serial number. So it sat on a shelf for two years. That doesn't sound like the market was starved, although a single datapoint doesn't prove much, of course.

[Steve Simpkin]

(10-19-2024 11:15 PM)naddy Wrote:  

(10-19-2024 10:04 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  As a consultant, Professor William Kahan assisted Hewlett Packard with the mathematical functions of a number of its calculators over the years.

I'll make a wild guess that he was the author of the "Accuracy of Numerical Calculations" appendix in the Advanced Functions Handbook. That part feels like it was written by a different author than the other parts.

...

Very good guess
Around 1977 Professor William Kahan, came up with an algorithm for a numeric solver and really wanted HP to implement it in a calculator. The problem was that HP marketing had no interest in making a model with a solver. Their marketing studies convinced them that their customers did not want a calculator with a "Solve" key. Eventually Professor Kahan managed to "convince" the person in charge of one of the HP calculator development groups, who really wanted a numeric Integration function, into making the HP-34C. Even after HP committed resources to making the HP-34C, HP management did not want to fully document the new functionality. The full story of the development of the HP-34C is very entertaining as is the story behind the development of the HP-15C.

"That’s how the HP-34C was born. They agreed to do it, and then like a thunderclap, they were appalled when I said, “You know, we’re going to have to put some guidance into the manual because people who use these keys, especially the integrate key, they can fool themselves. These things cannot be foolproof. There will be situations where people will get misleading answers, and they need a little bit of guidance about that.” “Kahan, you just told us to do this stuff, and now you tell us that you’re going to get wrong answers! I mean, all this time, we’ve been listening to you tell us how to get the right answer, invariably, every time!” "

Dr. Kahan’s discussion of the HP-34C starts on page 152. How he used trickery and deceit to get HP to include the Appendixes that describe the nuances in using the Solve and Integrate functions starts on page 154.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jlg9EWQ...zwcol/edit

[carey]

(10-19-2024 10:04 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  As a consultant, Professor William Kahan assisted Hewlett Packard with the mathematical functions of a number of its calculators over the years. His work work on algorithms included improving the accuracy of functions, increasing the performance of complex functions and adding to the feature-set of many HP models. As an interesting side note, Professor Kahan was instrumental in the development of the original HP-15C and its feature set. From the 2005 oral history listed below:

“Well, we could go on now with more of the Hewlett-Packard stuff because I had another ambition: the HP-15C. That was my ambition. I wanted to have a calculator that could be used by practically all engineering and most science students. And I wanted that calculator to be able to do all the math they were going to use up to their sophomore year except for divs, grads, and curls because on a calculator, you can’t really display regions and things like that. But you could certainly do everything else. You could do an awful lot of circuit calculation. You’d be able to do an awful lot of the calculation for the distortion of elastic structures in civil and mechanical engineering. You’d be able to solve some of the differential equations in kinematics for simple cases. You’d be able to do complex variables cases, so you could plot various flows. You know, I had a fair idea of the things that they have to learn, you see, up into their sophomore year. And I said, “I wanted a calculator that they could do all that stuff.” That would mean that professors like me could give them problems that were simultaneously more realistic and less tedious. And at that time, there weren’t personal computers in large numbers. Personal computers were a hobby.“

More about the work Professor Kahan did concerning the HP-15C and why HP did not sell as many of them as it could have is in the following 2005 oral history. His history with the HP-15C starts on page 151. The HP-15C Collectors Edition (and DM15L) is also running the original 1982 HP-15C firmware code with slight patches to accommodate more memory.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jlg9EWQ...sp=sharing

Yes, and to see and hear ACM Turing Award winner Professor Kahan discuss his role with HP calculators here is a YouTube clip of his 2016 interview conducted by ACM.

From a hardware perspective, while the 11C may have been the Voyager design target and therefore the additional 15C features look like add-ons, it's clear from Professor Kahan's interviews that the additional features were part of his plan to provide all the capabilities needed to complete the first two years of engineering school (except vector calculus and plotting). Hence, rather than an arbitrary packing on of extra features, the add-on impression resulted from limited Voyager keypad space and not limited vision of what the goal was.

In some respects, this is analogous to the situation Dr. William C. Wickes faced when his team developed a new symbolic algebra capable calculator operating system that HP required to fit into the body of the HP-18C calculator, and became the HP28C. Interestingly, unlike Kahan having to fit his plan into limited Voyage keypad space, Wickes had the reverse problem of almost too many keys (if such a thing is possible :) provided by the HP-18C clamshell keypad.

[naddy]

(10-19-2024 09:54 PM)naddy Wrote:  The hardware platform and function set of the 11C make such a perfect package that it seems obvious to me that this model was the primary design, and the other models were secondarily derived from it. The starting point appears to have been the goal to have all the functions of the 34C—minus the high-end SOLVE and ∫ features—but with enough keys for a more reasonable two shift levels rather than the 34C's three.

As I keep thinking about this, it strikes me that SOLVE and ∫ may actually have been part of the original design that became the 11C. Maybe marketing intervened and had those functions reserved for the future high-end model. Or maybe, more prosaically, they ran out of ROM space. (Is the 11C ROM full?) I imagine there was a short list of functions that had never made the cut because there was no key to spare, and Pyx/Cyx came out on top and replaced SOLVE and ∫.

This would go some way to explain a minor puzzle: the illogical placement of →R/→P on the 11C. You would expect them to be on the 1 key, next to the other conversions. Instead it looks as if they had been displaced when Pyx/Cyx were added and somebody made the decision to group those with the statistical functions. When the 15C freed up keyboard space by moving comparison ops behind the TEST prefix, →R/→P were moved to their logical—and quite possibly originally intended—position. There may have been knock-on effects on the 11C. I'm starting to picture an early 11C design that had SOLVE and ∫ where the 15C has MATRIX and RESULT.

[brouhaha]

(10-20-2024 01:40 PM)naddy Wrote:  (Is the 11C ROM full?)

The 11C, 12C, and 16C ROMs are full, to within a very small number of left over words.

The 15C has twice as much ROM as those, and is also very nearly full. Adding variable-length instructions, complex numbers, matrices, solve, and integrate took a LOT of code.

The 10C ROM is NOT full, as it was designed to be able to use a chip with less ROM and RAM. If the 10C had sold well, they might have made that smaller chip as a cost reduction. I've studied the10C ROM, and the code is actually much more closely related to the 12C than the 11C.

[Steve Simpkin]

(10-21-2024 07:30 AM)brouhaha Wrote:  

(10-20-2024 01:40 PM)naddy Wrote:  (Is the 11C ROM full?)

The 11C, 12C, and 16C ROMs are full, to within a very small number of left over words.

The 15C has twice as much ROM as those, and is also very nearly full. Adding variable-length instructions, complex numbers, matrices, solve, and integrate took a LOT of code.

...

For reference, the advanced features of the HP-15C calculator are described in the May 1983 issue of Hewlett-Packard Journal magazine (page 25). A PDF of this issue can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IrYfbFS...sp=sharing

Acknowledgments:
   

[Gamo]

I think 11C and 12C both released at the same time and

then later the 15C and 16C follow by the last model the 10C


Gamo

[rprosperi]

To make this topic a bit more complete, here are the official intro and disco dates, by model:

HP-11C: Sep/81 - Jan/89
HP-12C: Sep/81 - 22nd century?
HP-15C: Jul/82 - Jan/89
HP-16C: Jul/82 - Jan/89
HP-10C: Aug/82 - Mar/84

Thanks to research done mostly by Jake Schwartz in preparation of the HP Calendars done round 2008/9?

[vaklaff]

(10-21-2024 12:39 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  HP-12C: Sep/81 - 22nd century?

Let’s wait and see…

[mfleming]

(10-23-2024 02:54 AM)John Casper Wrote:  HP 15C is grossly overrated

Somewhat extreme

(10-23-2024 02:54 AM)John Casper Wrote:  as compared to the HP 42s, which followed

Blame Moore's Law here

(10-23-2024 02:54 AM)John Casper Wrote:  There should have been HP 42s Collectors Edition...

Swiss Micros DM42 running Free42

[naddy]

(10-23-2024 02:54 AM)John Casper Wrote:  HP 15C is grossly overrated as compared to the HP 42s,which followed.There should have been HP 42s Collectors Edition...

Frankly, I think the 15C CE exists because it's basically just a variant of the current HP-12C. They did it because they could. A hypothetical 42S CE would presumably require too much engineering effort.

The best calculator is the one you actually use.

The 11C exists in a very sweet spot of a small, ergonomic package, and what it does, it does well. The same more or less applies to the 15C. The 42S is the all around more powerful machine, but if the subset of functionality you actually use is well-served by an 11C/15C, then the 42S is just more complicated. And there's one thing the 42S is not: It is not keystroke efficient. The LN/e^ switch aside, all the functions it shares with the 15C require at least as many keystrokes as on the 15C, and quite a number require more keystrokes, e.g. [f][FIX][2] vs. [SHIFT][DISP][FIX][2][ENTER].

And then there are the people who prefer the 32SII over the 42S, as evidenced by the fact that SwissMicros saw it fit to create the DM32. Comparing the 32S(II) and the 42S, it strikes me that the 32S is a tool ready for use and the 42S is a tool chest that you use to build the tool you need. Bear with me. The 32S provides all the functions many people will ever need, plus some limited programming (so as to not be inferior to its predecessor, the 11C), and the added equation support in the 32SII obviates the need for many programs. The 32SII is also more keystroke efficient. By contrast, the 42S has a somewhat more powerful program model, alpha support and, importantly, the memory that allows you to build custom programs. Using a 42S without writing your own programs seems like a waste.

These are all different sweet spots for different users.

[AnnoyedOne]

(10-23-2024 11:17 AM)naddy Wrote:  Frankly, I think the 15C CE exists because it's basically just a variant of the current HP-12C.

Agreed. And the HP-15C LE before that.

Since 2011 or so the two have shared the same hardware base. Recompile the firmware, change the keys/layout, bezel, logo and packaging and you're done.

A new HP-42S would require a lot more work.

A1

PS: I should note that HP-12C Platinum/Prestige is different again. Different hardware and firmware but it looks like the 12C. Then there the "rogue" HP-12C sold in Brazil. It seems to be more of a new HP-12C Platinum/Prestige with newer (and buggy) firmware.

https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-22...#pid192959

[Liamtoh Resu]

The reference to a pdf file results in just a single page.


For reference, the advanced features of the HP-15C calculator are described in the May 1983 issue of Hewlett-Packard Journal magazine (page 25). A PDF of this issue can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IrYfbFS...sp=sharing

Is there a link to the full pdf file?

[AnnoyedOne]

(10-23-2024 04:18 PM)Liamtoh Resu Wrote:  Is there a link to the full pdf file?

I have the complete PDF (9.59MB created May 1st 2006) but don't remember where I got it. No doubt found with a web search.

A1

[emefff]

(10-23-2024 04:18 PM)Liamtoh Resu Wrote:  Is there a link to the full pdf file?

Sure!

http://hparchive.com/Journals/HPJ-1983-05.pdf

emefff