The Humble Homepage of Christopher Erickson
My HP calculator and museum
I have been collecting HP calculators
since the seventies. I have always loved the little RPN
beasts as well as programming them (which I have not done in years.) I even had the
fantastic fortune to be able to collect various factory prototypes! For those of you
who knew
and still remember, HP used to have a calculator catalog that came out every so often
called
Key Notes. Henry Horn was the editor and eventually retired from HP.
According to an
inside source, Henry's retirement was "accelerated" when a new management team
came to
the Corvallis factory and decided to change everything. Through a mutual friend I
learned
that Henry was willing to sell his entire personal calculator collection. I scraped
together all
of my shekels, exploited friends for the rest and purchased Henry's collection. It
even
contained the first working handheld prototype of the HP-35, the world's first handheld
scientific calculator! Not that any of you heathens care, mind you. But that's
okay. Because
I still have it in my sweaty little fists and maybe someday HP will decide "hey,
where is that
historical first working prototype of the world's first scientific calculator, the
HP-35? Maybe
we should buy it back from whoever has it for several million dollars or
something." THEN
you will be sorry that you didn't include me on your Christmas list!
HP Omnibook Laptop File Archives
I hope to have pictures and historical trivia here
at some point. My collection is huge and
distributed across many unindexed boxes. All it takes is time! Until then,
I guess that is why it says...
(more to come)
