Hewlett-Packard 9100A

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"The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal computer" is "ready, willing, and able... to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer."[1][2]

The Hewlett-Packard 9100A (HP 9100A) is an early programmable calculator[3] (or computer), first appearing in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared."[1]

An ad for the 9100A in 1968 Science magazine contains one of the earliest documented use (as of 2000) of the phrase personal computer.[2]

History

Electronic calculator prototype, made by Thomas E. Osborne for Hewlett-Packard, 1964, in the National Museum of American History

The unit was descended from a prototype produced by engineer Thomas "Tom" E. Osborne, who joined the company when HP decided to adopt the project.[4][5][6]

An engineering triumph at the time, the

magnetic card storage, and printer, the price was around US$4,900 (equivalent to $44,000 in 2024).[7]

Thanks to its high speed of operations which was an order of magnitude faster than competitors[8] – addition or subtraction took just 2 ms, multiplication 22 ms and division 27 ms – the device could quickly execute not just regular trigonometric functions (330 ms) or logarithms (130 ms) but many iterative computations when following a program.[9] This made the 9100A the first scientific calculator by the modern definition, and also marked the beginning of Hewlett-Packard's long history of using Reverse Polish notation (RPN) entry on their calculators.

Due to the similarities of the machines, Hewlett-Packard was ordered to pay about $900,000 in royalties to Olivetti after copying some of the features adopted in the Programma 101, like the magnetic card and the architecture.[10][11]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "History of the 9100A desktop calculator, 1968". Hewlett-Packard. Retrieved 2009-12-18.
  2. ^ a b Aaron, Clark (Dec 2000). "Wired 8.12: Must Read: The First PC". Archived from the original on 2015-10-04. Retrieved 2015-10-04.
  3. ^ See Old Calculator Museum definition at the end of cited page (note with asterisk)
  4. ^ "Osborne's Story". HP9825.com. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
  5. ^ "How the Model 9100A Was Developed", Bernard M. Oliver, September 1968, Hewlett-Packard Journal]
  6. ^ 1994 letter from Tom Osborne to Barney Oliver, hp9825.com
  7. ^ Monoskop/Whole Earth (1968). "9100A Calculator". Whole Earth Catalog (fall 1968), no. #1010. p. 34. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  8. ^ "The 9100 Part 2". www.hp9825.com. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  9. ^ "HP9100". hpmemoryproject.org. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  10. ^ "Olivetti Programma P101/P102". Old Computers. Archived from the original on 2016-06-09. Retrieved 2010-08-11. The P101, and particularly the magnetic card, was covered by a US patent (3,495,222, Perotto et al.) and this gave to Olivetti over $900.000 in royalties by HP alone, for the re-use of this technology in the HP9100 series.
  11. ^ Perotto, Pier Giorgio (1970-02-10). "3,495,222 Program Controlled Electronic Computer" (multiple). United States Patent and Trademark Office. et al. Google patents. Retrieved 2010-11-08.[dead link‍]


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