The Wizard and the Woz. The greatest calculator story ever told starring Steve Wozniak and the HP-45

[@pauliedweasel]

On January 26th 1973 as a 19 year old kid with a semester of college under my belt I started as a trainee technician with HP at their Fullerton California office repairing the HP35 scientific calculator and later working on the HP80 business calculator and HP45 scientific calculator. I also worked briefly on the HP65 programmable calculator and the HP97 desk top calculator, but shortly after that HP centralized repair of their calculator products to their service center in Palo Alto and to a facility on the east coast to improve the repair process. I still have service manuals for both the HP35 and HP80 as well as a collection various parts (Including some of the infamous early ROMs that caused the log natural e to the x conversion error) and the stickers that you had to peel off to get two of the six case screws out. It was quite an experience working for HP in those times.

[@brucekives2194]

As a former employee at HP, the old HP was very proud of Steve Wozniak, and of the many other employees that had left HP to start their own companies. This attitude was how HP started Silicon Valley.

[@anovaprint]

The love seems to be reciprocated quite a bit. He talks about it with such affection you would think it was Santa's Workshop.

[@CristiNeagu]

Interesting to see just how many incredibly bright people were around back then. Or maybe there still are lots of bright people, but back then they had more power over their lives and they could make their own companies. The really smart guys back then were building their own computers and starting million dollar companies. The really smart guys these days work for others. So I don't know which is it. Are people these days not as smart? Or are they not as adventurous? Or maybe companies are better at keeping them under heel?

[@ydhirsch]

@@CristiNeagu In the early Silicon Valley, Lockheed grew and shrank and grew and shrank, leaving cheap buildings to house startups, as well as laid off engineers to staff them. The 1960s space program showered the valley with money to solve the pressing needs of aerospace electronics, while there were still orchards to convert into housing tracts. In the 1980s, it was commercialization of microprocessors, and housing got tougher. In the 90s, it was workstations, web mania and Internet hardware, while housing got ridiculous, pushing engineers into San Francisco. What funding drives Silicon Valley now, and where will your startup's new staff live? The current smart guys face economic barriers to entry for their startups that just didn't exist before, though we may be seeing some relief on that front as physical presence becomes less important. Wait for the next recession, and see who emerges from the rubble. There are still new Silicon Valley success stories, though they may not happen as frequently.

[@G7VFY]

@@anovaprint It all started with William Shockley and fairchild, with the Germanium transistor

[@marcmckenzie5110]

I was at HP during the HP 35 days at the start of my career (Desktop Computer Division in Loveland/Fort Collins). Those were indeed great days, smart people, and open minds. I have an original and it’s current version in my desk today in retirement, along with the best business version the HP 17B II. Use them all the time.

[@kaitlyn__L]

This provides some nice context on _why_ HP turned Woz down - so many history of Apple videos just say “they didn’t know what they had and just said no, the idiots!” which always struck me as a probable oversimplification. Like, every major computer company had spin-offs and various venture stakes, HP deciding to let Woz have it with the potential for a buyout later was not strictly speaking a bad business decision.

[@anovaprint]

I had to go to one of his oldest speeches to find that extra context. I really wish more people would interview him about his HP days. But yes, I got a lot more empathy for the risk they were balancing after hearing that as well.

[@Araye]

you said nearly nothing about the calculator... you said nearly nothing about woz.

[@anovaprint]

I'm curious what you would have liked to see? Personally, I enjoyed hearing about how the 45 was effectively an upgraded 35 that woz could himself upgrade. And that he had this whole side hustle doing so. To me, it's a really interesting insight into what Woz was doing at the time.

[@SergeantExtreme]

Being an HP employee and only having 43 cents to your name is the most relatable part of this story.

[@geoffquickfall]

Hello, having restored every version of the HP calculator families from the 35 red dot to the 48 series the interesting thing about the 45 was the hidden timing function. It was a test of software only and not for timing due to the inability to source the required quartz crystal (see HP 55 successor). The work around is to start the timing on the 45 and start a stop watch at the same time. At one minute stop both. Convert the time on the HP 45 to seconds (total). Your correction factor is the ratio between the 45 seconds versus the 60 seconds on the stop watch. All future timings by the 45 can be converted to decimal, multiplied by the ratio and the correct measurement will now be in decimal seconds which can be converted by the 45 HMS function back to hours minutes and seconds. You can store the reading in the memories as lap times and etc. cheers, Geoff Quickfall (a proud wearer of the Wozniak Watch also (nixie).

[@anovaprint]

I thought that was a really interesting part of the 45 that the 55 ironed out as you say. You can see me playing around with it a bit in the background. The one thing I had a lot of trouble with was the conversion. I'd be very curious to hear how people were going about that equation. I talk a bit about the upgrade at 3:55.

[@davannaleah]

In 1972, I was in my second last year of high school. I heard about the HP-35 through an ad in Time Magazine and had to have one. I found out that my school could give me a sales tax exemption to buy one and that was it! All my savings, as a 16 year old, went into buying that HP-35! I took it to school and my maths teacher's eyes just glazed over...all of a sudden, he had a student that knew about something that was beyond him. My Chemistry teacher, on the other hand, thout it was great and wrote on the board...to 10 decimal places...things like the sin of e radians!...my gosh!.......It was an exciting time!

[@foomoo1088]

Love my HP41 CV , best calculator on the planet for 40 years and still works great!

[@ToreSchjeldse]

Back in 1970, I was an undergraduate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and remember the first calculator appearing. Among these the HP-35 and the Texas Instruments SR40. The professors were against the use of these devices, and said that anyone using a slide rule were required to give answers with three decimal places, but if you used a calculator you were required to show 9 decimal places! The issue was that the calculators showed only 8 decimal places!!!

[@anovaprint]

Oh, what a sneaky way to weed out the popular calculators of the time. I'm a bit younger but still remember the resistance to calculators. Often citing the idea we do not always have one around when of course these days we all have a supercomputer in our pocket. Thank you for sharing!

[@skysurfer5cva]

Did you reply along the lines of "the data I started with has only 3 significant figures, so showing 9 decimal places for the result would be BAD computing practice and you, Mr. PhD, ought to know that"? 🙂 That being said, I once provided 9 decimal places in the answer to an iteration problem that only required a 2-sig-fig answer because of the limits of the data and the empirical method we were using. I wrote a humorous commentary about why I did it (I won't mention the name of the high-maintenance classmate who inspired the 9 decimal places) and my professor said he completely understood. BTW, I am still Christmas-card friends with said high-maintenance classmate.

[@runvnc208]

The normal story -- clueless executives can't adopt to new technology.

[@anovaprint]

Hahaha, yes. Definitly a big part.

[@isleifoterogarcia4478]

@@anovaprint They used to much time thinking and opportunities comes and goes... but they were near for a very brief time and I enjoyed it.

[@thinkingfield]

Thanks for sharing this story. I always enjoy these 70-80s computer history stories.

[@anovaprint]

Thank you so much! Comments like this make my day. I hope to share some Apollo era NASA stories at some point that I don't think have been widely shared

[@CaribouDataScience]

The first calculate my family had was a Ti-30.

[@MrNoahTall]

Enjoyable story. In the late '70s, my buddy had an HP-29C and I, poorer, had a TI-58C. We were college freshmen and entertained ourselves by writing programs to perform the same task (e.g. RNG to find select strings of numbers, saving the closest result per cycle) and running them side-by-side. In my old age, I've finally got my vintage HP-35. I had to rebuild the battery pack, but I enjoy using it. I also collect Voyager series calculators and the new Swiss Micros devices. The '70s were an amazing time.

[@billj5645]

I bought an HP35 in around 1973 from an aircraft test pilot, for $200. It originally sold for $400 but the HP45 had just come out and the pilot was going to upgrade. When the HP45 came out it was also $400 and the price of the HP35 went down to $300. The original HP35 did not have a model number on the top of the case. They didn't know if it would be successful or if there would be any future models so a model number wasn't needed. Then when the HP45 was planned or had already come out, then they started putting 35 on the outside of the HP35 models.

[@johnpapiewski8232]

Old enough to have played with a 35 on display at a campus bookstore, and a 45 (not mine), a few years later, and finding the inaccurate timer, and also programming the 65 & 67 and others.

[@javaman4584]

I have one of those battery packs you used. They are a little loose. If you cut a small piece of thin bubble wrap and place it on top of the battery pack, the cover compresses it and the battery pack makes better electrical contact. There is someone, maybe on eBay, who makes 3D-printed battery pack shells that accept AA batteries that will last longer than the AAA packs.

[@michatroschka]

woz is a real virtuoso! so what you are saying that HP was the cradle for silicon valley and Woz and Jobs were influenced a lot by it

[@hdofu]

I think my dad had a 45 at work, he had a 65 at home he actually used alot as it had no working battery he used a wall wort for it.

[@sarah_757]

If irritates me to no end the amount of endless devotion Jobs gets while Woz was the real genius. We give too much attention to empty headed marketing and not enough to the real work being done. Thank you for putting out this video! I bought a 32SII in 1998 for navy "A" school in Orlando and I've had it ever since. I bought a new one, the purple and green, but someone on my boat stole it. I also have a 48 GX I had in high school although I had no idea how to use it, other than basic arithmetic. I've been an engineer for 20 years and still don't, lol. I believe I had a 20S too at some point. I also have a LaserJet 1200 I bought in 1999 and it is still my office printer. I've loved, and still love, the HP from the era when they made real things, before the chintzy worthless plastic.

[@danc2014]

Jobs was the one that saved apple after the mac sales dropped and was going bankrupt.

[@hifijohn]

always wanted one since I saw it when I was a little kid but who could afford it almost $400 about $2.7K by todays money.Also I think HP invented the function key.

[@calcaware]

I feel a Walter White being born. Jokes aside this was very informative and entertaining. I love learning stuff like this. Especially since my new stable job is an IBM i (AS400) and our codebase is still in COBOL and RPL because this company is so old. I love the perspective. Sure there are better things now, but there's also a technological nostalgia of a time before I was even born. I'm honored to be a part of history and to make my mark on the past while helping move towards the future. Now because of the power we have things being clever in code is starting to feel like bad design that is unreadable. Back then clever design was able to take advantage of the hardware which was prized for efficiency. Maybe my perspective is getting biased from the people I work with on the verge of retirement.

[@jamesdye4603]

Didn't see any actual connection between you and Apple, but I appreciate the research involved in making this video.

[@anovaprint]

I appreciate you checking it out! I think there is a lot of fun history in the calculator world that hasn't been discussed much. I'm curious if you meant Woz or the 45 in regards to a connection between Apple? If I had to choose, I think 4:50 might be a good example of the Apple connection. Woz was already getting a vision of how all the elements of a calculator could be put into service of a home computer but HP passed on the idea. Imagine a world where the Apple I/II was actually an HP product. Crazy thought!

[@CalculatorObsessed]

Neat story, read before but you bring life to it. I really enjoy using my HP-45, now repaired, after years of gunk built up on the power switch stopped it functioning correctly.

[@isleifoterogarcia4478]

Today I received my own HP-45 from eBay and find this. My interest in computers, were in part to those calculators, specially, the keystroke programmables and in those days HP appears to me leading the computer technology with the HP3000 mini computer and the instrument controllers, like the HP9825 and the personal ones, HP-85. For a brief moment HP was the center of interest in computer revolution when the HP-150 Touchscreen PC was in the market, the first of it's kind to be controlled by touch, like modern cell phones and tablets but HP was not the first company to use it, it was for me, the first. Were great days, at college and launch me as a HP3000 computer operator from 1985 to 1992 and my memories from those days, never ceased. Now I administer systems as a hobby with Linux. Great video.

[@miladmiladzade7572]

Woz is my hero

[@anovaprint]

He's really lived an interesting life that could have gone a dozen directions. His time with HP is particularly influential IMO

[@williamogilvie6909]

HP calculators really had their start.in 1964, when Tom Osbourne designed and built a calculator and convince Bill Hewlett that HP could make money selling them. HP introduced the HP 9100 in 1968. Osbourne, and the team that formed around him at HP, designed the HP 35, HP 45, and other calculators. Woz was part of that team.

[@baladinbaladin2549]

Machine très compliquee hp mais ses machines fabuleux comme texas

[@willallen7757]

Very interesting .

[@anovaprint]

I really appreciate you checking it out. Sharring this stuff with like minded people makes my day!

[@turbodog99]

How rpn rules

[@koehntopp]

What kind of mains cable is that at 2:04 - I'm intrigued...

[@MrNoahTall]

It looks similar to a USB-A to HP-35 cable. It's a modern device. I bought mine from a guy who makes them and sells them on eBay.

[@crystalsheep1434]

Wow cool story

[@anovaprint]

Thank you for watching! I'm always a sucker for Woz shenanigans, personally. Considering doing a top 5 woz pranks video at some point.

[@dooda1193]

way keen man

[@wb.c]

Amazing to see that now RPN is basically obsolete in calculators. Time shows no mercy.

[@MrNoahTall]

I've got two new high-end Swiss Micros devices that demonstrate that "obsolete" is less correct than "little used."

[@wb.c]

@@MrNoahTall Sorry, but it’s obsolete. SwissMicro is basically a kickstarter company making small runs of calculators. The cost of the devices relative to what they are proves that fact. I can get a new over priced typewriter from the store too, does that mean typewriters are not obsolete?

[@MrNoahTall]

@@wb.c Fair point, but you're still assuming an obsolescence that's not been proven. What is one of the oldest pocket calculators still in production? My accountant has one.

[@geekwithsocialskills]

I love nuggets like this about vintage technology, especially when it comes to calulators and computers! This was a really awesome and nicely done video!

[@anovaprint]

Thanks man! I really appreciate the feedback and support. This one has kind of been a passion project so I took a bunch of extra time to tease it out. That's really killer it got noticed!