Shady Characters

It’s that time of the year again!

You: a discerning reader of books about unconventional information technologies (unusual marks of punctuation, say, or pocket calculators). Your friends and family: the same, naturally. But what gifts to give them this holiday season?

I am here to help. And because I am still very much on a calculator jag, we will be concentrating on some of the best pocket calculators out there — the cleverest, the longest-lived, and even just the hands-down–shucks–goshdarnit best looking models available to buy.

1. Braun ET66 reissue

Dieter Rams, Braun’s totemic lead designer from 1962 until 1995, created many of the German company’s most recognisable products, from hi-fi gear to cigarette lighters and alarm clocks. But Rams also ventured into the world of the pocket calculator. From 1977 to 1987, and in partnership with a designer named Dietrich Lubs, Rams created a line of pocket calculators that embodied his motto of “less, but better”.1

The ET66 of 1987 was perhaps the apogee of the company’s calculators. To glance at one in passing is to be less than impressed — the ET66 does a very good impression of being a very average pocket calculator — but there is a consistency of shape and colour in its different elements that, on a closer look, elevates it from being merely a pocket calculator to something closer to the pocket calculator.2

In fact, so clean and logical is the ET66’s design that Apple Computer once sold them as part of the “Apple Collection”, a mail-order catalogue of third-party products that were deemed worthy to be associated with the famously exacting computer company. (Apple’s ET66 came with an Apple logo emblazoned on its top-right corner.)3 More recently, Jony Ive, Apple’s erstwhile chief designer, has cited Rams as one of his main influences — and, not coincidentally, the calculator application that ships with Apple’s iPhone is a very clear homage to Rams’s calculators.4

The original Braun calculators are collector’s items by now, but the good news is that you can buy a reissed one that faithfully reproduces the ET66 for just €59.

2. HP-12c

I’ve talked a lot about Hewlett-Packard’s seminal HP-35, both here on the blog and in Empire of the Sum, and with good reason. It was the world’s first pocketable scientific calculator, wrapped in a sensible and usable package — perhaps not quite as polished as Rams’s efforts, but distinctive and pleasing nonetheless — and there is a strong argument for it being the first “must have” electronic calculator. Perhaps even the first “must have” consumer electronic device.5

Today, though, we set aside the HP-35 for another of HP’s most celebrated pocket calculators: the HP-12c of 1981 and beyond. The 12c forsook the 35’s scientific bent for the business world, helping its user to make interest rate, bond, and other financial calculations. And rather than the 35’s portrait form factor, the 12c distinguished itself with a none-more-’80s landscape layout, echoing the tiny credit-card calculators that were all the rage in the decade of its birth.6

If the 12c doesn’t have quite the same mythical reputation of its more famous sibling, it has nevertheless outlived it by a significant margin. Forty-three years after its release, the 12c is still on sale. For $49.99, you can buy a modern-day HP-12c whose colour scheme, dimensions, button layout and features are identical to its earliest incarnations.7 And I heartily encourage you to do so. The accountant, Rotary club treasurer or merchant banker in your life will thank you for it — if they don’t already own one.

3. Literally any slide rule

To be clear, I am not suggesting that you break into the Smithsonian and steal Sally Ride’s slide rule in particular. But slide rules in general are irresistible to any mathematically-inclined human being. Compact, clever, tactile and collectible, they are also, most helpfully, almost completely unknown to anyone under the age of fifty. Once, science fiction writers wrote admiringly of the slide rule as the key to mathematical enlightenment (Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit — Will Travel8 being the mostly widely-cited example); now, they litter antique stores and desk drawers, their magic intact but unappreciated.

Where to start when buying a slide rule? eBay is awash with slide rules large and small, ranging from common-or-garden educational varieties to more esoteric examples such as nuclear fallout calculators and agricultural fertiliser slide rules. They start at a few dollars or pounds each and go as high as you like. I’m partial to a simple bamboo slide rule, as were made by the truckload by Hemmi Slide Rule Co., Ltd, of Japan, and rebranded by many sellers around the world. Below is a very, very bad photograph of my “Post” branded Hemmi, bought for me by my father in law for just $3.

Believe me when I tell you that a slide rule will be the best, most unexpected gift that someone receives this year.

4. Casio S100X calculator

There have always been high-end calculators. The Busicom Handy-LE of 1971, for instance, considered to be the first true pocket calculator, was available in a sybaritic gold-plated variant.9 The slim, potentially explosive Sinclair Executive was aimed at a similarly rarefied clientele. That said, pocket calculators more generally were subject to a relentless race to the bottom. Chips got smaller and cheaper; calculator manufacturers vertically integrated or died; and prices tumbled year on year until only the most ruthlessly efficient companies remained.

Casio, in the calculator business since the very beginning, is one of those survivors. And despite the average Casio being a plasticky denizen of the maths classroom, Casio’s line of calculators is topped by a far more refined model. Enter the S100X: a desktop calculator machined from solid aluminium, with diamond cut edges, a brushed finish, and an engraved serial number that ensures that your £359.99 copy is one of a kind. (For that kind of money, a unique serial number would be the least of my demands.)

Now, the S100X is not especially advanced in terms of its ability to actually calculate things. This is a four-function calculator with percentages, square roots and tax rates bolted on, then wrapped in a shiny aluminium case. Yet I think it says something about the calculator’s enduring status as a kind of mathematical avatar that Casio went to the trouble to dress up such a mundane device in such an overwrought package. If money were no object, the S100X would make an excellent gift.

5. Empire of the Sum

Okay, okay, I am cheating. Empire of the Sum is a book, not a calculator. Even so, I hope you will consider giving it this year as a gift. Book sales are essential to keep all of this going — the blog, the books — and every copy sold helps. And if this post hasn’t convinced you that the pocket calculator is a subject worthy of your time, other books are available! Whichever one you buy, or you give, I hope its reader enjoys it.

1.

“Dieter Rams”. Design Museum. Accessed December 14, 2024.

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2.

Rams, Dieter, and Dietrich Lubs. ET66 Calculator. 1987. Victoria & Albert Museum Furniture and Woodwork Collection.

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3.

The Apple Collection (1986-1987).

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4.

rams foundation. “Jonathan Ive”. Accessed December 14, 2024.

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5.

Hughes, Jim. “The HP-35”. Codex99.

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6.

Hicks, David G. “HP-12C”. The Museum of HP Calculators. Accessed November 25, 2021.

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7.

hp.com. “HP 12C English Calculator”. Accessed December 15, 2024.

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8.

Heinlein, Robert Anson. Have Space Suit—Will Travel. New York: Pocket Books, 2005.

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9.

Calcuseum. “Busicom LE120GA”. Accessed December 15, 2024.

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