Why no SOLVE & INTEGRATE commands on the 41C?

[Jake Schwartz]

(01-15-2020 01:46 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  ....

The 41 could have included them (notwithstanding issues like ROM space and available opcodes) but that would have essentially 'obsoleted' the 34C less than a year after introduction.

Hi Bob,

If you think about it, that would have obsoleted the 34C less than a month after introduction, since the 34C was introduced on July 1st and the 41C on July 16th :-)

Jake

[David Hayden]

Thanks for all the interesting thoughts. I hadn't thought about linear regression, which Csaba pointed out is missing from the 41C. Perhaps HP wanted to position the 41C has a highly programmable machine where users would do functions like linear regression and Solve & Integrate via FOCAL programs. It kind of makes marketing sense.

[Didier Lachieze]

(01-15-2020 07:20 PM)Jake Schwartz Wrote:  

(01-15-2020 01:46 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  ....

The 41 could have included them (notwithstanding issues like ROM space and available opcodes) but that would have essentially 'obsoleted' the 34C less than a year after introduction.

Hi Bob,

If you think about it, that would have obsoleted the 34C less than a month after introduction, since the 34C was introduced on July 1st and the 41C on July 16th :-)

Well, not really as the 34C was introduced one month after the 41C : the 34C was announced on August 15, 1979 along with the 33C and 38C (see PPC Journal - V6N5p2 – HP Status).

[Jake Schwartz]

(01-16-2020 08:58 AM)Didier Lachieze Wrote:  

(01-15-2020 07:20 PM)Jake Schwartz Wrote:  Hi Bob,

If you think about it, that would have obsoleted the 34C less than a month after introduction, since the 34C was introduced on July 1st and the 41C on July 16th :-)

Well, not really as the 34C was introduced one month after the 41C : the 34C was announced on August 15, 1979 along with the 33C and 38C (see PPC Journal - V6N5p2 – HP Status).

Yeah, I see that Volume 6 Number 5 of the PPC Journal mentions August 15th for the intro date of the 33C, 34C and 38C, including the HP press release on page 32. The intro dates of those three machines are listed as 7/1/79 on our HP Calendar which Richard Nelson and I did in 2007, which is probably based on a chart done for the 2000 conference in Los Angeles, showing machine intro dates. Also, Rick Furr's poster lists the 34C intro date as "7/79" there, and I suspect that he didn't have the same source as I. Further research will be needed to try to locate the source of that July-first date, out of curiosity.

Here is another tidbit- the first edition of the PPC Melbourne (Australia) group's newsletter, describing their meeting on August 27th, 1979 says on page 3 (under the heading of "New HP Calculators") the following:
"Since the meeting in August it has been found that HP had also released 3 other new machines in the States in July. The 33c and 38c are continuous memory versions of the 33E and 38E, while the 34c is a new (LED) scientific programmable wit many powerful programming features of the 41c, and continuous memory....."

Thanks,
Jake

[Jake Schwartz]

Okay - I located my first source of the 7/1/79 intro date: the Handheld and Portable Computer Club's Datafile newsletter, Vol 15 No. 6 (Nov/Dec 1996) on page 27 is Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz' "HP Calculator History - HP-33C and 38C" article at the top of the page, where it begins with: "Exactly a year after their previous new model, HP introduced five new handheld calculators on the first of July, 1979. Two of these, the HP-33C and the HP-38C, were exactly the same as earlier models except for the addition of Continuous Memory. The other three, the HP-34C, the HP-37E and the HP-41C, each deserve a separate article. Indeed, the HP-34C deserves a whole book, and the HP-41C deserves far more...."

I can surely confirm that the 41C intro date was July 16th, so there's an issue with that. We might have to consult with Wlodek as to his source of the 7/1 intro date of the other units, but at least there is another source.

Jake

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(01-16-2020 06:35 PM)Jake Schwartz Wrote:  Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz' "HP Calculator History - HP-33C and 38C" article at the top of the page, where it begins with: "Exactly a year after their previous new model, HP introduced five new handheld calculators on the first of July, 1979. Two of these, the HP-33C and the HP-38C, were exactly the same as earlier models except for the addition of Continuous Memory. The other three, the HP-34C, the HP-37E and the HP-41C, each deserve a separate article. Indeed, the HP-34C deserves a whole book, and the HP-41C deserves far more...."

Craig A. Finseth concurs on the first of July, 1979 for all those 5 models.