Finally bought an HP-41

[lrdheat]

I fondly remember the awe of seeing a handheld calculator that could calculate the trigonometric and logarithmic functions when my dad came home with his newly arrived HP-35 in June 1973. In the meteorology building at Florida State University, there were 2 HP-35’s in locked cradles affixed to desktops of small chairs for the benefit of the meteorology students in the study area. It seemed miraculous, coming from the slide rule era. I got an HP-67 in 1977 on an installment plan while at my first job at KDAL TV/Radio. My most ambitious project was not weather related...it was simulating the 1970 American League baseball season...I had the on base averages for each of the main player lineups of each team on the magnetic cards, one for each team. I had index cards that for each lineup that would determine the reason for reaching base, be it a walk, or 1b/2b/3b/HR. The program general random number, compared it to the on base percentage from the data on the magnetic card. If the random number was greater than the on base percentage, pi to the first 3 digits would display, then a 2 second pause for suspense, then a random number to compare to my index card to determine reason for reaching base. The indirect storage was used to keep track of outs, and to remember where in the lineup to go to when the 3 outs were made, and the other team was resuming!

The next miraculous advance that I wondered if I would see in my lifetime did not take too long to materialize...the capability to do symbolic math on a hand held! I am still marvel at this!