Online calculator simulators?

[Steve Simpkin]

(07-09-2022 08:15 PM)jonmoore Wrote:  

(07-09-2022 07:41 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  Dr. Kahan blames HP marketing for that.

"... I continued to work with them for a couple of years, but my heart just wasn’t in it anymore."

That's a really great interview segment Steve. You can understand why his heart wasn't in it anymore.

Yes, unfortunately not his first disagreement with HP marketing and management.

HP-92 (Price)
"It was just marvelous, and it was going to be priced at $450. And the executives, especially those in marketing said, “Hey, there are people who would pay $750 for this. We should price it at $750.” “No, no!” came up a voice from below. “$450 is the right price.” “What the hell do you guys know?” said the more senior marketing people. “This is going to be value price. $750 is well worth it. We’ve shown it to various bigwigs, and they’ve said, ‘Oh yes, absolutely. I would be happy to pay $750 for this.’’’ And it came out with that price."

HP-34C (Solve key)
"He had forwarded this suggestion to the marketing people and characteristically, alas, the marketing people had come back and said, “We’ve asked if anyone wants a solve key, and no one has ever heard of such a thing. They don’t say they want it.”"

HP-34C (Additional explanation of the Solve/Integrate functions in the manual)
"They agreed to do it, and then like a thunderclap, they were appalled when I said, “You know, we’re going to have to put some guidance into the manual because people who use these keys, especially the integrate key, they can fool themselves. These things cannot be foolproof. There will be situations where people will get misleading answers, and they need a little bit of guidance about that.” “Kahan, you just told us to do this stuff, and now you tell us that you’re going to get wrong answers! I mean, all this time, we’ve been listening to you tell us how to get the right answer, invariably, every time!” Well, the difficulty was then that I’d have to go to the manual writers. But there was a Hewlett-Packard policy which said, “We are professionals, and we sell to professionals. We tell them what the device does, and they figure out how to use it. We’re not writing tutorial material in our manuals.” And I tried to explain, “Look—this time you’ve got to put some tutorial material in the manuals. You really must. Otherwise, folks are going to fool themselves."