Retro Review: BA-55

[martinot]

(02-19-2018 08:57 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  Texas Instruments' entry into the programming financial calculators. Good for basic calculations and quick and simple programs, but didn't dethrone the HP 12C.
Link: http://edspi31415.blogspot.com/2018/02/r...ba-55.html

Thanks for the great review as always Eddie.

I however agree with Gene in that I think you where very lucky with the keys!

When I went to school in 1985 (when I was around 16) half my class had a Casio fx-180p, and the other half TI-57 (I got first to use a better HP calculator three years later at high school and university).

I think the TI57 is very closely realted to your financial BA-55. The latter half of the class with the TI-57 often swore loudly during math and physics lessons about wrong keypresses (either none, or double), and quite often also about battery contact problems, while we Casio users never had that problem (we however had to use electrical tape to keep the very poorly designed battery door and calculator together).

Good times!

Now to my question; why does the BA-55 have an [x<>y] key, and why is the TI-57 power key [y^x] instead of [x^y], as none of them are RPN calculators (like HP)?

Very strange, and I can not understand why!