Show and Tell Tuesday

I have absolutely nothing interesting (that I can share with the rest of the world) to post today. Therefore I will embrace show and tell Tuesday and show my Hewlett Packard 48GX calculator. This is a picture of my calculator, and I can’t live without it. It is a reverse polar calculator, which means it is a stack orientated logic. If you don’t understand that don’t worry, it just means most people can not figure out how to use it. It was a gift from my mother years ago when it was first available on the market. The Hewlett Packard 48GX was a very expensive calculator at the time, around 400.00, and thanks to HP leaving the calculator market it is still a very expensive calculator.

I used the 48GX through out my undergraduate and graduate careers. It was such a powerful tool that I never needed (or learned) Mathematica or Maple (computing software packages). I use it all the time in my job. To this day I take it where ever I go; on airplanes so I can calculate the fraction of the speed of sound the plane is traveling, or the acceleration rate when taking off. This post is dedicated to the best calculator ever built, and I hope you never break because I would be screwed if you did.