A new book about the history of the pocket calculator

[Steve Simpkin]

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator
by Keith Houston
Release date: August 22, 2023



"Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. The calculator is dead; long live the calculator.

In this witty mathematic and social history, Keith Houston transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators. At every turn, Houston is a scholarly, affable guide to this global history of invention. Empire of the Sum will appeal to math lovers, history buffs, and anyone seeking to understand our trajectory to the computer age."


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"Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon." ???

Odd since the electronic calculator I think of as a “pocket calculator” had nothing to do with any of those things. Perhaps the author considered the slide rule or another type of small mechanical calculator like the Curta as a “pocket calculator”.

[Alder Statesman]

(05-29-2023 10:55 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator
by Keith Houston



"Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. The calculator is dead; long live the calculator.

In this witty mathematic and social history, Keith Houston transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators. At every turn, Houston is a scholarly, affable guide to this global history of invention. Empire of the Sum will appeal to math lovers, history buffs, and anyone seeking to understand our trajectory to the computer age."


-------


"Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon." ???

Odd since the pocket calculator had nothing to do with any of those things.

Not scheduled for release until August, but looking forward to it.

I thought the HP65 and later the HP41 went into space as backup computers for NASA.

[Paul Dale]

(05-29-2023 10:55 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  …, helped build the atomic bomb, …

Interesting, I wonder what model pocket calculator existed in the early - mid 1940s?


Pauli

[Steve Simpkin]

(05-30-2023 08:20 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  

(05-29-2023 10:55 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  …, helped build the atomic bomb, …

Interesting, I wonder what model pocket calculator existed in the early - mid 1940s?

Pauli

It would likely have been a slide rule. It technically could be carried in your pocket. Any other type of mechanical pocket calculator at that time would be quite limited, like an addometer.

[Pekis]

(05-30-2023 08:20 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  

(05-29-2023 10:55 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  …, helped build the atomic bomb, …

Interesting, I wonder what model pocket calculator existed in the early - mid 1940s?


Pauli

Curta ?

[Stevetuc]

(05-30-2023 08:55 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  

(05-30-2023 08:20 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  Interesting, I wonder what model pocket calculator existed in the early - mid 1940s?

Pauli

It would likely have been a slide rule. It technically could be carried in your pocket. Any other type of mechanical pocket calculator at that time would be quite limited, like an addometer.

And the Curta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

Which is the WWII Buchenwald reference.

[Steve Simpkin]

True but the Curta did not enter production until 1947. Too late for the “atomic bomb”. I can also not find any reference where a Curta went to the moon.
Slide rules on the other hand were used for routine calculations during the development of the atomic bomb and did go to the moon.

Slide Rule, 5-inch, Pickett N600-ES, Apollo 13


   

[jonmoore]

(05-30-2023 08:20 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  

(05-29-2023 10:55 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  …, helped build the atomic bomb, …

Interesting, I wonder what model pocket calculator existed in the early - mid 1940s?


Pauli

The clue was here:

Quote:transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators

https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibiti...ulator.asp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

A fascinating example of precision engineering, although having read through the both articles it appears Curt Herzstark wasn't liberated until April of 1945. Whatever the specifics, I suspect the author/publisher/pr are simply attempting to illustrate a timeline from the abacus to the electronic pocket calculator, which will no doubt mention e.g. Pascal, Babbage and Turing on the journey, even though the milestone achievements of those individuals weren't of the pocket variety.

[jonmoore]

This quote come from the Whipple Museum of the History of Science (Cambridge University).

Quote:During World War II in the United States, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert built the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the fastest machine to date, to calculate firing tables for the military. At Bletchley Park, British codebreakers and engineers produced the world's first programmable electronic digital computer, Colosus, to aid in the cracking of German ciphers.

https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/expl...ng-devices

This timeline (I suspect) will inform the basis of the "helped build the Atomic Bomb" aspect of the PR blurb. Although the precision and logic of zero's and ones have never informed PR, something which HP always understood only too well.

[jonmoore]

I should have clicked once I saw the authors name that the book would likely be both well researched and written. I own a couple of others he wrote, and have subsequently placed a pre-order for "Empire of the Sum".

Check out the reviews of his last tome "The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time". I'm also a fan of a good pun, so there's that to consider too.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/enti...B00CCS4UQI

Thanks for the recommendation Steve.

[brouhaha]

(05-30-2023 08:20 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  

(05-29-2023 10:55 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  …, helped build the atomic bomb, …

Interesting, I wonder what model pocket calculator existed in the early - mid 1940s?
Paul

Not pocket, but extensive calculations were performed using electromechanical equipment from IBM. Specifically, the 601 multiplier (some units modified to also provide division), 405 accounting machine (tabulator & printer), 513 reproducing summary punch, 031 alphabetic duplicating keypunch, 075 card sorter, 077 collatot, and probavlyly a few other card processing machines. This went far beyond what was practical to do using slide rules, though slide rules were certainly used for less extreme calculatiions.

This equipment was normally "programmed" by wiring plugboards, and the machines were not normally interconnected. A plugboard could be removed from a machine and replaced by a plugboard wired differently, so that you could have the equivalent of a library of programs for that machine. Los Alamos devised ingenious ways to interconnect the equipment, and to semi-automate data flow over cards from one machine to another, to partially automate many calculations, including some that required iterative solution.

This work probably inspired IBM's Card Programmed Calculator, introduced in 1949, which was also composed largely of a set of machines originally designed to be used separately. This included the 604 _electronic_ multiplier in place of the earlier 601. The CPC was the forerunner of the 650 computer, which was drum-based and was programmable in the modern sense (Von Neumann architecture, programs stored in same memory space as data).

[jonmoore]

Paul's point was with regard specifically to hand held calculation devices. To date, there's no evidence of a manufactured hand held device being available in the lead up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but there was a design (the Curta) which wasn't built until after the end of the Second World War.

I do, however, agree that the author is likely to discuss all manner of electro-mechanical calculation devices of the 20th century that eventually led to HP's introduction of the HP-35.

[BobVA]

(05-29-2023 10:55 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  "Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon." ???

Odd since the electronic calculator I think of as a “pocket calculator” had nothing to do with any of those things. Perhaps the author considered the slide rule or another type of small mechanical calculator like the Curta as a “pocket calculator”.

Just got my copy today and indeed that's the case. He was referring to the slide rule (pp 75-76 for the atomic bomb and Apollo at least).

I was trying to guess which name familiar to me would pop up first, and whether I would have any books by or about them.

I didn't have to read far - just to page two. Much to my surprise it wasn't Leibniz or Napier, but Dr. Irene Pepperberg, who studies animal cognition. And I do have a book by her, a much valued asset in the decades-long battle of wits I've been losing with my parrot. An unexpected synchronicity. :-)

[Eddie W. Shore]

I am a bit surprised that it isn't all about the pocket calculators but calculators (or calculator machines) throughout history. Still, it will make a good read.

[bxparks]

I received this book as a gift recently and just finished reading it. It's a good read, the writing flows well, and it tells many interesting historical stories. It seems to be well-researched, with 78 pages of end-notes, which support 280 pages of content.

I think the strongest parts of the book are the early sections, which cover the calculating devices and the human attempts at computation before the invention of electronic pocket calculators. For example, this is the first time I am reading about departments composed of human "computers", mostly women: "Harvard College Observatory [...] hired its first female computer in 1875, and by 1880, the entire computing staff was made up of women. But this was not quite the victory for equality that it appeared to be. Harvard's female computers were paid only half the wages of their male predecessors." I guess this became common enough between WWI and WWII that in 1944, "a member of the U.S. National Department Research Committee [referred] to a unit of computing power as a kilo-girl."

For me, the weakest part of book is the coverage of the later years, in other words, the rise and fall of the *electronic* pocket calculator. The book covers the first graphing calculator from Texas Instruments (TI-81) in Chapter 14. Then VisiCalc kills the calculator in Chapter 15. And that's the end of the book. There is no coverage of modern graphing calculators with CAS systems, for example, and how that affects the teaching of mathematics to students. No mention of how different calculator companies took over different parts of the world. No coverage of the collapse of HP's calculator division. (Addendum: No mention of the most important debate in the 50-year history of scientific calculators: RPN or AOS. :-))

Anyway, that's my quick book report: good read, great historical information, but weak coverage of modern electronic calculators.

[carey]

(06-09-2024 08:33 PM)bxparks Wrote:  For example, this is the first time I am reading about departments composed of human "computers", mostly women: "Harvard College Observatory [...] hired its first female computer in 1875, and by 1880, the entire computing staff was made up of women. But this was not quite the victory for equality that it appeared to be. Harvard's female computers were paid only half the wages of their male predecessors." I guess this became common enough between WWI and WWII that in 1944, "a member of the U.S. National Department Research Committee [referred] to a unit of computing power as a kilo-girl."

Yes, human computers were employed well past WWII. In fact, until 1970 at Langley (see NASA's history page, and the book "When Computers Were Human" by David Alan Grier, and the Hidden Figures book made into a popular movie with the-famous scene depicting human computer Katherine Johnson employing Euler's method (embedded in this nice YouTube video in which UCLA Professor Alan Garfinkel discusses it) to compute John Glenn's re-entry trajectory.

[SlideRule]

An excerpt from Exploring the Early Digital, History of Computing series, © Springer 2019, ISBN 978-3-030-02152-8 (eBook), 2`13 pages

Chapter 10
“The Man with a Micro-calculator”:
Digital Modernity and Late Soviet
Computing Practices
…
   Half a century later, the man was still celebrating Soviet technological modernity,
but this time he was wielding a programmable calculator. When the nation’s
most prominent popular scientific magazine, Nauka i Zhizn' [Science and Life],
started a column devoted to both playful and serious applications of programmable
calculators, the column was titled “The Man with a Micro-calculator.”
…
   As most recent historical narratives increasingly describe the computerization
using the term of “digital revolution,” the exclusion of calculators, a literally
and obviously digital technology, is a paradox revealing underlying
presuppositions. The user communities around programmable calculators have
been systematically omitted in academic historiography. The most conspicuous
exception to this is Paul Ceruzzi’s standard A History of Modern Computing
(1998), which prominently features programmable calculators and their user
groups and newsletters as the vehicle through which ordinary professionals and
technological enthusiasts were first exposed to programmable digital technologies.
Yet even Ceruzzi deploys these machines within his master narrative primarily
as a way of explaining why users were ready to embrace personal computers.
…
   I start by showing important parallels between the Soviet and American trajectories
of calculators as commodities by tracing the contours of the Soviet microelectronics
industry responsible for the mass production of calculators. Next, I turn to
the pages of Nauka i Zhizn’ to trace the meaning of “hands-on” work within the
Soviet material culture as well as the organization of the calculator user communities
and the exploitation of the machines’ “undocumented” features. In the second
half of the chapter, I explore the domestication of programmable calculators in the
broader Soviet context of the state computerization campaign.
…
10.1 The Making of a Commodity
…
                                        … The calculators were the devices that both showed
what IC could do and the economy of scale governing their production. During the
1970s, many actors stepped in the new niche of producing calculators, and the
prices were brought down drastically. As the simplest calculators became giveaway
commodities, the high-end (and more profitable) programmable calculators, with
performance characteristics rivaling that of a computer, were developed. Targeted at
engineers and scientists, these calculators publicized the idea of portable and personal
computing before the advent of the “personal computer.”
…
   The mass production of Soviet pocket calculators started in the mid-1970s and
the programmable ones at the end of the decade, only a few years behind the Western
and Japanese benchmarks. A 1990 (Trokhimenko) publication devoted to technical
characteristics of several Soviet programmable calculators contains tables listing
the main features of some prominent Soviet models, a number of Hewlett-Packard
(HP) models, and those of Texas Instruments. The comparison with the HP models
is particularly insightful, as the Soviet developers clearly appreciated and utilized
the advantages of the reverse Polish notation used by HP. In Table 10.1, I reproduce
the information about the Soviet and HP devices complimented with additional data
regarding dates of production runs and retail prices upon the first release.

BEST!
SlideRule