[HN Gopher] Personal calculator has key to solve any equation f(... ___________________________________________________________________ Personal calculator has key to solve any equation f(x)=0 (1979) [pdf] Author : todsacerdoti Score : 50 points Date : 2022-01-17 06:55 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (people.eecs.berkeley.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (people.eecs.berkeley.edu) | mauricioc wrote: | There's a very long interview with Kahan on ACM's YouTube | channel. Here's a link to the part where he talks about the | "Solve" button: https://youtu.be/smrs6FfnCzs?t=8670 | mikecarlton wrote: | Check out the author. For those not in the know, Kahan was the | driving architect behind IEEE 754 -- pretty much the basis of all | computer floating point now. See | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kahan | | I remember seminars at Berkeley where equipment manufactures show | up to talk about their gear and Kahan would sit in the front row | and grill them over their floating point implementations. | antman wrote: | So that is where Kahan summation algorthm comes from! | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahan_summation_algorithm | tagoregrtst wrote: | When you watch Sussman and Steele give the MIT 6001 course the | audience are seasoned HP calculator guys and gals | | These must be the team who were designing the HP-28S and user rpl | - the beautiful love child of Forth and Lisp. | | And what a calculator they put out! | whartung wrote: | RPL is just magic. It's really fun to work with. | | It's hard to appreciate what you're holding in your hand when | you have one of these machines. When I learned the 48s had both | Kermit and a serial port, the clouds parted and the sun came | out. Really extraordinary capability in a $99 calculator. | | Always liked the form factor of the 28s, just needed a way to | get code on and off (besides the printer port) of them. | tagoregrtst wrote: | And a better battery port. Also, dont confuse A23 batteries | for N. | | But ya, i always like the 28 more than the 48. | | Have you heard of RPL/2? A modern implementation of RPL meant | for scientific computing? Its annoying to compile but its | quite nice! | bluenose69 wrote: | I had one of these way back when, and loved it. | | This is a great article, and reading it might give younger folks | an idea of why HP users from the 1900s loved their calculators so | much. They were designed for people who needed to get things | done. And it wasn't just the algorithms inside. The physical | machines were terrific, too. The pivoting keys left no doubt as | to whether you had entered a digit (or whether, as in | competitors' machines, the keystroke had entered the digit twice | by mistake). And then there's RPN. Oh, lovely RPN -- trusty | friend to those who needed correct answers and needed them in a | rush. | | Such elegance (of machines and writing) is rare nowadays. | | Thanks for posting this, which brought back good memories. | madengr wrote: | People from 2020 still love the too, ha ha. I have several 35s | at work and just got a Swiss Micros DM42 from xmas. Then again, | I'm 50 and used these all through EE school and my profession. | I have four 32sii still sealed in clamshell package. Went out | and bought a bunch years ago when they discontinued them. | | https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm42 | buescher wrote: | I didn't realize at the time how much I learned from my HP-15c | manual, which had a similar treatment of its numerical | algorithms. Thanks HP! | jcrawfordor wrote: | Some years ago I bought a printing desk calculator. The | manufacturer apparently wanted to minimize their translation | bill for the manual, so it almost completely avoided any | textual explanation, instead illustrating how to use all of the | functions by showing number lines with arrows and the | corresponding calculator buttons. At first it was frustrating | but after getting used to it I actually thought it was pretty | neat, as it encouraged a more intuitive understanding of | exactly what the calculator buttons did. | | Relatedly I learned a whole lot of algebra from reading a slide | rule manual. I don't think I had a good intuitive understanding | of logarithms until I saw them as pictures with arrows showing | how they work on the slide rule. And then the manual was full | of practical ways to reduce various common math problems to | problems that are easy to solve with the slide rule, usually by | figuring out how to express them as powers or logarithms. | ahmedfromtunis wrote: | I'm really interested in reading these manuals. Do you recall | what were they for? | jcrawfordor wrote: | For the former I unfortunately cannot find a copy and I | don't have the calculator any more... my hazy recollection | is that it was a Panasonic printing desk calculator I | bought at Staples but that could be wrong. Fwiw the newer | desk calculators seem to all have pretty bad keypads so if | you want a calculator that's really comfortable to use for | fast totaling you might want to get a "vintage" one from | when they were using mechanical key switches. Part of the | reason I got rid of the one I had is because I was having | issues with it not always registering keypresses when I | thought it would have. | | As for the slide rule, I believe it was a Pickett booklet, | likely one of the ones that have fortunately been archived | here: | https://www.sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Library_Pickett.htm | | The Asimov slide rule book is also very good and I have a | copy. I believe I inherited it, along with several slide | rules, from my grandfather who had been an EE at the NIST | and also fastidiously kept a lot of things he had bought | for grad school. One of the slide rules has "US Government | Property" silkscreened on with the scales which is fairly | neat, I assume DoD or someone had had a large number made | on contract like they used to do with office supplies. I | also have a US Government Property set of drafting tools | that I use when hand-drafting sewing patterns. | pjmorris wrote: | I had a similar experience with slide rule books I checked | out from the public library in the 1970s. Looking on Amazon | now, I see 'An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule' by none | other than Issac Asimov. It's entirely possible that this | is the book I used, and I think it might fit your bill. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-18 23:00 UTC)