frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales) (11/10/89)
[I've redirected follow-ups to comp.sys.misc and comp.sys.handhelds.] In article <2148@leah.Albany.Edu> bv3456@leah.albany.edu (Victor @ The Concrete Museum) writes: >Are there any companies, other than HP, that currently make RPN calculators? >Where could I find information about them? I dimly recall one, but that was >many years ago... Strictly speaking, all of them. Any calculator which requires you to calculate, say, a square root or a trig function by first entering the number to which the operation will be applied, then pressing the operator key, is an RPN calculator. The fact that most of them use infix entry of simple arithmetic doesn't change this. As far as making machines which use only RPN, the last non-HP machines I bought which did this were the old Sinclair scientific calculators: - first, the 'Scientific', which was white with a blue and grey keyboard, and only supported 5-digit scientific notation (the "Cambridge" case style, smaller than a cigarette packet) -- originally available in kit form to mitigate its high price (circa 1975); - then, the 'Scientific Programmable' (in the "Oxford" case style), with 24 steps of programmability, and only sine, cosine and arctangent trig functions (you could work out the others yourself!)) (1977); - and lastly, the Cambridge Programmable, with 36 steps of programmability and a hump on the back of the old Cambridge style case to hold the larger battery it needed to power its NatSemi single-chip micro (1978). I'm not aware of any other purely RPN machines after this, but I'd be interested in finding out if there were (or are) any. -- Frank Wales, Systems Manager, [frank@zen.co.uk<->mcvax!zen.co.uk!frank] Zengrange Ltd., Greenfield Rd., Leeds, ENGLAND, LS9 8DB. (+44) 532 489048 x217