HP-25C It’s alive!

[Ethan Conner]

Back in 2016 a coworker found out I had a small collection of vintage HP calculators. He had been buying all kinds of vintage electronics at estate sales and brought me a HP 25C with a pouch. I asked him where the battery pack and AC adapter were. He proudly stated that he had seperated all of the batteries, chargers and devices into three giant cardboard boxes.

It had belonged to an engineer at the aircraft factory we work at and still had the materials pass sticker and name with employee number. It also had the name and address of the engineer which was three blocks away from where I grew up. Most likely it was used on the F16 and F111 programs which were both active in the mid 70’s.

The downside other than no battery pack was it had been used by a smoker and stored by a smoker. Last year I got busy and cleaned it up removing probably 90% of the cigarette smell. Today I received a battery pack and inserted it into the calculator and the display lit up! “0.00” So far everything seems to be functioning just fine.

In 1976/77 my father and I had an early morning routine of breakfast and reading the newspaper. He would give me the sections that had car advertisements and HP calculator ads. I begged him to buy me any HP calculator but it just wasn’t in the budget and my young brain couldn’t measure the price against our cost of living. He did buy me some no name teal led calculator that broke after three weeks.

When i see an led HP calculator it reminds me of those early mornings sharing the paper with my Father and dreaming of Hewlett Packard calculators.