Top three calculators ?

[Steve Simpkin]

My top 3 calculators:
1. HP-48SX - I used my HP-48SX as my only engineering calculator for over 27 years.
2. HP-25 - My first HP. I saved up for over 1.5 years and bought it on my 16th birthday. I used it for almost 10 years through High School, College and my first job.
3. HP-28C/HP-28S - I used my HP-28C then my 28S for 3 years as my only engineering calculators before buying my HP-48SX.


Back in the 1970's through the early 1990's, scientific calculators were used by engineers, technicians, scientists and others in technical fields as professional tools. They were also eventually adopted by students, slowly at first, because of the relatively high cost. They replaced slide rules, adding machines and trig/log books that had been in use for well over 100 years. And they did this task much faster and with higher accuracy. Programmable calculators made even a bigger impact in productivity. They automated tasks at a time when computers were not common and were very portable and personal. They made us better at our jobs. Scientific and programmable calculators, as professional tools, were eventually replaced by computers and software applications but those of us who worked in fields during that time that required portable computational devices to do our jobs remember what a difference calculators made. I have very strong memories of using my HP calculators through High School, college and my 40+ years as an engineer.