P→R, R→P, Vector Arithmetic and HP-35

[brouhaha]

(07-05-2024 04:57 AM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  Yeah, I get it.

Let’s see if the crowd will go for an electronic slide rule first. Then, we could later build on that for an encore. And, if so, it wouldn’t be long before we (HP
engineers) would be presented a big brother to the 35. Yeah, I see.

The hand calculator probably had explicit approval from Bill for the HP-35 feature set as an stepping stone, having a plan from the outset of how to advance from that to a more 9100-like calculator, which of course was the HP-65, delivered in lesst than two years after the HP-35.

The HP-45 was another step along the way, and the HP-80 was an interesting side-path, with financial calculators becoming a really big business for HP as well.

All calculators after the 35 and 80 were dependent on a newer "quad ROM" chip that provided 1Kx10 instruction memory, rather than the 256x10 of the original ROM. Even _with_ the new ROM, cramming everything necessary into the HP-65 appears to have been quite a challenge.