Obtaining old calculators

[mtbc]

Recently, I stumbled upon an article about Commodore Business Machines' line of calculators. I have owned plenty of Commodore hardware, going back to the PETs that my secondary school retired, but no calculators. I was amused to read that, back in the 1970s, some calculators were marketed as being electronic slide rules. I still have my father's slide rules, he also had a desktop mechanical calculator and, later, one of the first version of the TI-30, with the red glowing digits that would show some thinking going on as it evaluated a trigonometric function.

I determined that I might enjoy occasionally using a decent ancient scientific calculator, ideally with a reverse-Polish interface. However, looking around online now, I don't see any particularly sweet spots in what one can buy of Commodore's calculators. I like how, say, the Commodore SR-4190R even has hyperbolic functions and probability distributions but it's not as if examples in good condition remain abundant and rarer models like the M55 appear indeed to be inconveniently rare.

Remembering mst3kmoxie's HP 12C, which can calculate some of the financial things that now form part of my day job, I explored the alternative of investigating the older HP and Novus range. However, things like the Novus 4510 don't seem to have existed in the UK and international shipping costs plenty. In dropping the nostalgia and taking a look at modern offerings, I discovered the SwissMicros DM15L which could be fun to play with. They seem to be out of stock right now but, worse, Parcelforce fees for importing one would mean it wasn't worth it.

So, the obstacles are broadly those of availability at all, or of getting the calculator from there to here. Ah well, it's more an idle fancy anyway rather than a pressing need. I seem to be in the wrong place and considerably the wrong time.

Comments

[lovelyangel]

It's hard to believe that anyone would need more than an HP-12C; it has a lot of functions. I have an HP-45, HP-10C, HP-11C, and one (maybe two) HP-12C. Plus I always use PCalc in RPN mode. I think it's amazing that the HP-12C is still sold new after decades in production.

[mtbc]

That sounds like a nice collection!

[thewayne]

I remember my first calculator, back in the early '70s, a four-banger with a nixie tube that I got in a 'selling stuff for the school' thing. I thought it was amazing. I later had a TI scientific that had the magnetic card reader, sold it to a friend whose dad rebuilt big power transformers. I preferred the step down that had non-volatile memory.

My favorite was the HP 41CV. That was a truly awesome calculator! And someone stole it from my office at work, probably the cleaning crew. I bought a newer model, but they'd changed the RPN programming language, and I just didn't like it as much.

Still love RPN, though.

[mtbc]

Goodness, some excellent past things at least.

[thewayne]

There's a company that makes HP RPN calculator clones that is very highly regarded.  I think they're in the EU, don't remember.  One of their remarkable advantages is using conventional batteries rather than button cells.  But they mimic the old HP key feels, and visually are very good mimics.