SR-50: A bumpy road??

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(06-14-2024 08:25 AM)brouhaha Wrote:  I'm not claiming that HP was perfect, or even that they did the best possible job under the circumstances.

This is certainly correct. But the competition, in this case Ti, exploits the tiniest little weakness to their benefit... As if the significantly lower cost of the Ti SR-50 would not have been enough to convince the buyers. By the way: Comparative advertising was not allowed in my part of the world in these days so we did never see adverts like the one from Texas Instruments.

One year later (1974) Sinclair in the UK came out with the "Sinclair Scientific" that sold in crazy numbers even if it offered just three (!) digits of precision with transcendental functions. People just didn't care because they no longer had to look up the numbers in tables and those wouldn't give them more digits either. And really: nobody, really nobody, ever needed 10 digit precision in any calculation that was ever done on a pocket calculator.

But still to this day, Swiss Micros boasts with 34 digits of precision when it comes to advertising the most expensive scientific calculator currently on the market... so numbers obviously sell! Just as with "top speed" which helps to sell cars in countries with strict speed limits like Switzerland :-)

Regards
Max