HP worked with a team of researchers who had Ph.Ds in numerical analysis, mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science to develop the 12C. The goal of developing the HP-12C was to have a sophisticated programmable financial calculator, that would be small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, would have long battery life and would meet the HP “drop test” – the ability to withstand a fall from a desktop onto a concrete floor. Almost fifteen years ago in the very early days of CD, I wrote a post about the 25th anniversary of the HP-12C in 2006, here’s an excerpt of that post:
Here are some related links about the HP-12C Financial Calculator:ġ. In today’s dollars, the computer would cost $10,500 and the printer would cost $6,000. To get an idea of how much consumer electronics have advanced in the last 40 years in both quality improvements and price declines, the 1981 Radio Shack catalog features the “top-of-the-line” microcomputer for an “unbelievably low price” of $3,450 and a dot-matrix printer for $1,960 on p.
#Hp financial calculators comparison portable
If you aren’t convinced that the HP-12C financial calculator is maybe the only consumer electronic product from 1981 that is still relevant and up-to-date after 35 years, browse a 1981 Radio Shack catalog here (check out the telephones, stereo equipment, reel-to-reel tape decks, cassette players, portable stereo systems, 8-track tape players, telephone answering machines, TV antennas, radios, calculators, “microcomputers,” typewriters, etc.) and see if you can find any other consumer electronic available in 1981 that is still considered relevant and up-to-date today! If you can find an example, I bet there won’t be very many! Now that it’s 2021, and since I couldn’t find anybody else who has done so already, let me be among the first to say “ Happy 40th Anniversary, HP 12C Financial Calculator.”
I have used HP-12C financial calculators on a daily basis since the 1980s and currently own five of them: two original 12C models, one 25th Anniversary models (released in 2006), and two “Platinum” HP 12C models ( sells for $79.98 and has more processing power and storage space than the regular HP 12C, and also features both Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) and Algebraic entry modes – more on that difference below). What makes this calculator totally unique among all consumer electronic products is that it was first introduced by HP 40 years ago at a retail price of $150 (more than $450 in today’s dollars) in 1981, and yet even today is considered to be a relevant, up-to-date, “state of the art” product for financial professionals, CPAs, financial analysts, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, investors, and finance professors. Pictured above is the HP 12C Financial Programmable Calculator, available from the Hewlett-Packard website for $69.99.
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