Why no SOLVE & INTEGRATE commands on the 41C?

[J-F Garnier]

My personal feeling (or maybe did I read something about it) is that the 41C was introduced as the first member of the new series 40, as there were the series 20 and 30 with several models of different capabilities. Just think that the 41C had 64 registers only (same amount than the later HP15C). The initial marketing plan was (maybe) to develop a complete series 40 with higher performance models.

The 41C was then so a success and instead of introducing a 42C, 44C, etc, HP developed extension modules (Time, X-functions, I/O, ...), and introduced the 41CV (just more RAM) and the 41CX (Time and X-functions integrated, and a few extra new functions) without change so much the 41C architecture.

We had to wait for the Advantage module (around 1985, very late in the 41C lifetime) to get the proper Solve and Integrate features on the HP-41C.

Just speculations, unless we could get a direct feedback of the HP people of that time.

Edited: Yes, I was sure I read something about it. In his book "A Guide to HP Handheld...", Wlodek wrote "The HP-41 model ... was to be the simplest model of a series, and indeed the HP-41 was first planned as a fairly simple model".

J-F