 |
In 1972 microprocessors hit the market as the key components of the first handheld electronic calculator. The nameplate read simply "Hewlett Packard" and the device could perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions.
It sold for $395, which in those days represented several weeks pay for a young engineer. But it was a huge success and within three years the K & E Company, manufacturer of slide rules and perhaps the biggest direct competitor, shipped the last of its mathematical magic wands. Slide rules had been the gold standard of manual calculators for 400 years, but they were blown out of the water by a battery-powered chunk of plastic with an electronic chip at its heart.
| RELATED LINKS |
| 10 Electronic Technologies That Changed Construction |
|
1. The Internet Collaboration Is Evolving From Sharing to Managing |
| 2. Computer Aided Design CAD Pioneers Gave Desktop PCs A Full Range of Electronic Drafting |
|
3. Lasers Lasers Have Become Common Element in Industrys Toolbox |
|
4. Analysis Software Speed and Power of Computation Opens Doors to New Possibilities |
|
5. Personal Computers Personal Computers Empowered Users and Launched a New Age |
|
6. The Fax Speeding the Pace of Business and Shrinking the Globe |
|
7. Critical Path Method Network Logic Was Aided By Mainframe Power |
|
8. Calculators Calculators Built on Microchips Doomed Slide Rules |
|
9. Mobile Communications Contractors Were Early Adopters of Mobile Comms |
|
10. Global Positioning Systems Location-Based Technologies Track Construction Operations |
|
What's Next? Innovations Are Ready for Trial and Adoption, But Great Gains Will Take Major Change |
Like all the rest of the emerging electronic technology devices, the first portable electronic calculators stood on the shoulders of earlier technology. But their widespread availability took a lot of angst out of the process of performing calculations for designers, estimators and engineers, and the cost of the devices quickly dropped to affordability.
John Voeller, chief knowledge officer at Black & Veatch, Kansas City, says calculators shouldnt be credited with inventing capability that wasnt already available from mainframes and distributed computing. Extremely capable calculating computers were also doing just fine prior to microchip technology. "Imagine that calculators never went to miniaturization but simply stayed as they were. We still would have gotten a long way down the road. We were going out to 36-digit calculations at a level that was the equivalent to 64-bit computers back in 1969," Voeller says.
What did change was general availability of high-level electronic calculating power. Built on the same microchip technology that came to market in portable calculators, it expanded as personal computers proliferated.
Ease of use and availability continues to increase. Sophisticated and accessible calculation programs are scattered across the Web and are as accessible as a browser. One company rooted in the early years of personal computing, MathSoft, Cambridge, Mass., now offers server-based products that not only let companies manage and standardize calculation functions, but record operations and the provenance of their assumptions.
|
Post a comment to this article
Report Abusive Comment