It was the summertime and everybody was trying to get their hands on this hot new gadget. People were waiting in long lines and selling their possessions in order to raise the money to get this device. Was it the newest iPod or the iPhone? Nope - but there is a connection to Apple. Was it the cool, but useless, USB Mini Fridge? Absolutely not. The year was 1972 and everybody had to have the HP-35 - the world’s first scientific calculator.

Since the public sees them as relegated to the desktop printer space people tend to forget the rich history that Hewlett-Packard has. They were in Silicon Valley before it was called Silicon Valley. They were there before Google, before Cisco, before Sun, before Intel and even before Fairchild Semiconductor. The decision to go ahead with the HP-35 project was one of the best decisions of Bill Hewlett’s tenure at the company. All of the marketing studies indicated that there was no demand for this project but Hewlett charged ahead because, being an actual engineer, he thought he couldn’t live without one of these devices and he thought other engineers would feel the same way.

History proved Hewlett correct and all of the marketing studies incorrect. Orders in the first month exceeded what was originally estimated as the entire market size. Existing calculators could only calculator four mathematical operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This new HP-35 could perform trigonometric and exponential functions which made the slide rule obsolete. How many of us even know how to use a slide rule? I don’t see very many hands going up.

So why is this coming up now and what is the connection to Apple? Without much fanfare HP “re-released” the HP-35 this last summer to celebrate its 35th anniversary. Thanks to Moore’s law the price for this gadget has gone down from $395 in 1972 to $59.99 in 2007. The steady advance of technology beats the cost of inflation hands down. As far as the connection to Apple - Steve Wozniak spent a short time working at HP’s Advanced Products Division. After being shown no interest from HP management for his idea of a personal computer he decided to strike out with Steve Jobs to form their company. They needed capital for their new enterprise so Steve W. decided to sell his prized posession: his HP-35.

More resources:
Wikipedia entry for the HP-35.
HP’s 2007 release of the HP-35.
HP Museum entry for the HP-35