HP-55… Any takers

[Matt Agajanian]

Hi all.

I could see the 55 as a hefty scientific and statistical calc on its own merit.

I could see it as a stepping stone for basic programming. Although much to be desired. Despite its shortcomings, was there a notable crowd for the 55?

[Eddie W. Shore]

I agree with you that the HP 55 is a stepping stone. If I was an adult in the 1970s (I was born in 1977), I would have the 55 for what it's worth.

[Steve Simpkin]

The HP-55 came out around Jan 1975 for $395 which was about 1/2 the price of the HP-65 ($795). Even though it lacked the card reader and had about 1/2 the programming steps compared to the HP-65, it had a timer, metric/english conversions and 11 more memory registers, and a price was hard to beat at the time. The problem was that about 8 months later, the HP-25 came out for $195, about 1/2 the price of the HP-55. While the HP-25 lacked the timer, metric/english conversions and had 12 fewer memory locations, it was more compact, had ENG notation, storage arithmetic and most importantly, fully merged program steps. At $195 it probably greatly reduced the sales of the HP-55.

https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-bin/compare...ne&diff=ON

[BillBee]

The 55 is a decent number cruncher, lots of good functions, conversions and you can put a quick program in for repetitive calculations.

Steve really laid out the main comparison points. IMO 55 vs 25 is a draw with me leaning towards the 55 for the stats and its tough to fry the chip (price today can be equal depending on the market).

-Bill

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(09-14-2022 03:01 AM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  Despite its shortcomings, was there a notable crowd for the 55?

Considering it's rarity I would say no. And I think this is mainly because in 1975 HP did not hold the monopoly for scientific pocket calculators any more. Not even for programmable scientific pocket calculators.

If I had been shopping for a calculator in 1975 (I was not because at that time calculators were not allowed at my school yet, only one or two years later) my choice would not have been between an HP-65 for 800$ or an HP-55 for 400$, but instead between an HP-65 or a Ti SR-52, which also cost slightly below 400$, and offered more of everyhing than both HPs.

My own statistics show that to some extent. My collection, which I build on a rather tight budget, contains only one HP-55 (working) but three SR-52s (also working). At least here in Europe Ti already had overtaken HP on the market by a wide margin in the mid 1970ies. Which was mainly due to the insanely high prices HP charged in these years around here, whereas Ti prices were the same everywhere.

Regards
Max

[Dave Britten]

I keep a 55 on my desk. I don't do a ton of programming with it, but it's got a good feature set (linear regression, unit conversions), and the stopwatch comes in handy for many unexpected things. I do wish it had percent change as a built-in function, though.

[Paul Dale]

I too keep a 55 on my work desk. Timers are great in meetings. The additional functions are occasionally useful.

Pauli

[aurelio]

I also occasionally use the HP55, of which I appreciate the unit conversion, and the stopwatch as well as the shape, but the HP25 is more comfortable to carry, up to me, light and small (it fits in one hand), as well as being my first machine.

[pascal_meheut]

The HP-55 has many functions I use often: the timer, the unit conversions.
But I do not use mine that much because even if it is in good shape, it is getting old.

So a 41CX with conversions programmed in USER mode and an home-made overlay did the trick.
And I'm working on switching to the DM41X.