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Minoru Saba (minorusaba@toad.social)'s status on Thursday, 01-Aug-2024 08:47:37 JST Minoru Saba

"During the 1970s and 1980s, Hewlett-Packard used RPN in all of their desktop and hand-held calculators"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation
🔸Couldn't afford HP calculators as an undergrad, but had access to one bolted to a lab bench.
Took a while getting used to RPN.
Eventually bought a Sinclair Scientific in kit form; it had a red LED display, was painfully slow, but worked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Scientific
#ReversePolishNotation
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1. Sinclair Scientific Calculator photographed c 1974 - From Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sinclair_Scientific.jpg
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  Reverse Polish notation
  
  Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as reverse Łukasiewicz notation, Polish postfix notation or simply postfix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators follow their operands, in contrast to prefix or Polish notation (PN), in which operators precede their operands. The notation does not need any parentheses for as long as each operator has a fixed number of operands. The term postfix notation describes the general scheme in mathematics and computer sciences, whereas the term reverse Polish notation typically refers specifically to the method used to enter calculations into hardware or software calculators, which often have additional side effects and implications depending on the actual implementation involving a stack. The description "Polish" refers to the nationality of logician Jan Łukasiewicz, who invented Polish notation in 1924. The first computer to use postfix notation, though it long remained essentially unknown outside of Germany, was Konrad Zuse's Z3 in 1941 as well as his Z4 in 1945. The reverse Polish scheme was again proposed in 1954 by...
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  Sinclair Scientific
  
  The Sinclair Scientific calculator was a 12-function, pocket-sized scientific calculator introduced in 1974, dramatically undercutting in price other calculators available at the time. The Sinclair Scientific Programmable, released a year later, was advertised as the first budget programmable calculator. Significant modifications to the algorithms used meant that a chipset intended for a four-function calculator was able to process scientific functions, but at the cost of reduced speed and accuracy. Compared to contemporary scientific calculators, some functions were slow to execute, and others had limited accuracy or gave the wrong answer, but the cost of the Sinclair was a fraction of the cost of competing calculators. History In 1972, Hewlett-Packard launched the HP-35, the world's first handheld scientific calculator. Despite market research suggesting that it was too expensive for there to be any real demand, production went ahead. It cost US$395 (about £165), but despite the price, over 300,000 were sold in the three and a half years for which it was produced. From 1971 Texas Instruments had...

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