HP-35 articles

[Didier Lachieze]

As a tribute to Jacques Laporte I’ve posted in the Articles section some papers/articles about the development and sale of the HP-35:

• Direct Mail Marketing of the HP-35 Pocket Calculator - WESCON 72
• MOS Circuit Development for the HP-35 - IEEE COMPCON72
• The HP-35: a tale of teamwork with vendors
  

The first two ones are from September 1972 and were presented by HP people. The third one is from February 1973 and is largely based on the second one but with some unique details about the HP-35 MOS chips and vendors. They have been retrieved from Google Books search results.
If anybody has access to the original documents and can scan them for the next version of the Museum DVD/USB Flash drive that would be great.

[Don Shepherd]

Didier, thanks for posting those articles. I just read the first one, about the direct mail marketing of the HP-35. It is very interesting how they determined that selling the HP-35 by direct mail would be the way to go. I know that in 1974 they used the same strategy for selling the HP-65, at an even higher price of $795, and again they were wildly successful. A great product sells itself.

I have acquired two marketing mailing packets from 1974 for the HP-65, including the order card with the customer name and address printed on a computer-generated label. Both were addressed to individuals, one in Illinois and one in the Chemistry Lab Electric Shop at the University of Massachusetts. Since I have the order card, obviously these two gentlemen did not buy a HP-65, at least through this mail promotion. I wish I knew how many 65's HP sold, but I bet they made a ton of money.

I couldn't have afforded a 65 in 1974; I was still in graduate school and my 1968 Beetle cost about twice the cost of the 65. But I acquired one on Ebay about 6 or 7 years ago and it is my favorite HP calculator. It has lasted 41 years and still runs like a champ. I doubt any product made today will still be working 41 years hence.

Thanks for the articles.

[bshoring]

Thank you for posting these !

Bob

[rprosperi]

(04-29-2015 11:07 PM)Didier Lachieze Wrote:  As a tribute to Jacques Laporte I’ve posted in the Articles section some papers/articles about the development and sale of the HP-35:

Thanks for sharing these Didier! A nice touch in memory of Jacques. He certainly would have approved.