My HP-12C Died Today
My oldest friend died today, an HP-12C financial calculator that’s been my daily pal for 39 years. Yesterday it was on. Today it is off forever. One more thing in a year not to remember: Covid. Economic disruption. Politics. Social unrest. Drought. Heat. Fires. Smoke. Hurricanes. And now this.
If you own a 12C, be forewarned this sense of loss may strike when your calculator dies. And there are many of you, tens of millions by some accounts. The 12C is a superstar in the world of financial calculation. It’s a tool for Old-ie Time-ies and TicTokers alike because it provides a simple way to get financial insight. Yes, the technology is old and the form factor is antiquated. But it’s still HP’s best-selling product and has been in continual production since its debut in 1981.
I bought my 12C before it was made, pre-ordered in 1981 in great anticipation of the Best Calculator Ever. Retail price was $150, which is equal to $447.05 in today’s money, or .039 Bitcoin.
And what a beauty it was! With bespoke horizontal elegance, the 5.1” x 3.1” x 0.6” device weighed just four ounces. Built-like-a-brick, the 12C was poised for any numeric challenge.
Under the hood, the CPU had 61Kbits of ROM and 2.2Kbits of RAM. The LCD driver powered a one-line, 10-digit display. Perhaps you smirk at these Paleolithic features, but note the 12C also included a low-battery detector on the chip.
Let’s discuss batteries. They’re the bane of mobile existence. Batteries always crap out at the wrong moment. We worry more about charging our batteries before leaving the house than eating a proper breakfast. Not the 12C; it’s a model of stellar battery performance. HP engineers designed it for low-power consumption. The 85,000-transistor circuit drew just .25 milliwatts; standby leakage was five or ten nanoamperes.
In plain English, the engineers believed this would let the 12C run for one year on three small silver oxide batteries. Would this be true for today’s mobile devices. With daily use, my 12C’s first battery change was seven years after purchase! The internet says several owners have reported their 12Cs are running on original batteries after 20–22 years. Like the Energizer Bunny, the 12C just keeps on calculating.
Except for my 12C, which is now dead and looks like it could have died years ago. Keys are in fair shape, but the metal case around the LCD is scratched and dented. The backside shows considerable wear where etched instructions are rubbed out. A rubber footpad is missing. It’s the kind of wear earned by many calculations.
One cannot not be embarrassed by the unique casual-chic look. You pull this baby out in a meeting (when we had physical meetings), lay it on the table, and everyone knows the owner of this device is a serious cat who’s put in at least ten thousand hours of calculating. The wear is a badge of honor, like the pride felt by a guitarist whose non-factory applied Road Wear helps his axe make him feel and look like Stevie Ray Vaughn.
There was a leather case lost years ago. Probably why the body is so beat up.
As for other accessories, I still have the user manual. (Who keeps a manual for 39 years?) It devotes considerable space to the 12C logic system called Reverse Polish Notation. If you’re used to a normal calculator, RPN feels as foreign to a native English speaker as conversing in a language like Polish. (I can say that because I’m part Polish.) RPN actually was named in honor of Jan Lukasiewicz, a Polish logician and philosopher who invented the core concept in the 1920s. RPN turned out to be handy for computer-calculated math because expressions don’t need parentheses. When punching in data, the operators go before or after the operands. This streamlines data entry and computation for long, complex expressions and helps to identify errors as they occur instead of at the end of the stream. At least that’s how the argument for RPN goes.
RPN lovers will have endless debates with RPN haters. Frankly, after I got used to RPN, operating a regular calculator became awkward and frustrating. Think of it like this: to a 12C user, RPN is easier and more logical than standard algebraic notation, much like the political preferences of a liberal are more logical to a liberal than for a conservative, or vice versa.
Logic squabbles aside, the 12C is a hit because it produces useful information anywhere you need it with the press of a button. Math. Statistics. Time value of money. Cash flow analysis. Amortization. Depreciation. Bonds and calendar. This sounds like an advertisement in 2020 for a phone app.
Indeed. Apps let you do almost anything with a phone, so: why would anyone want to use a 12C now? Especially if a 12C app lets you clone the calculator on the phone?
I believe the answer is habit and nostalgia for a physical world — especially since the pandemic has suddenly jerked us into a more virtual world whether we like it or not. Simulating the tactile sensation of a 12C in your hands and feeling the discrete click of its sleek contoured keys is not the same as grasping a rubber-cased phone, tapping a flat glass surface, and hearing “key clicks” electronically generated by an app.
It’s like a musician who prefers to physically draw a bow across the vibrating strings of a double bass while gently coaxing a vibrato tone with skilled hand technique. You can create a similar sound with a MIDI keyboard controller, a digital audio workstation, digital instrument and effects plug-ins, aftertouch, quantization, randomization of note velocities, and other software controls. A virtual approach has unique benefits. Yet it’s not the same experience as using a physical instrument. Nor does it sound as real is. Sometimes virtual is worse.
The profound pandemic-driven swing to virtual is mostly out of our control. Not all of the changes are bad, and I’m sure we’ll see many positive benefits as new becomes familiar. But darn the change is hard! Especially when it forces sudden transformation. Or strikes someone you’ve known or loved.
Yes, my HP-12C died today. While it’s just a calculator, perhaps the loss is a metaphor for all of our losses this terrible year. Now we need to figure out how to adapt and move on.
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Dave Buerger is a technology business ghostwriter in rural northern California. He now gets HP-12C functionality with a smartphone app.
