Ah, the good old 16C.

I bought one back when I did an MPE Internals class with Jason Goertz in
Seattle back in..198?.....I forget.

It is still going strong today which is a testament to the build quality and
care that HP used to lavish on its products  :o)

I found a blog by someone who bought one in 2006 which I found entertaining
and would like to share it with you here :

"You probably think I'm nuts to be using a calculator that was discontinued
in 1989 and only 203 bytes of memory. And I had to pay
extra<http://www.hpmuseum.org/software/swcd.htm>to get a PDF version
of the scanned original manual.

Perhaps I am crazy, but here's why I love this little machine:

1. RPN. You either love this or hate it. This is my first RPN calculator and
for me RPN is the right way to use a calculator. I read a short introduction
to RPN tricks (of which there are very few, but filling the stack for
repeated operations is one and using LST x to prevent the stack from moving
is another).

2. The industrial design of HP calculators is pure art. They are the right
size for your hand, the keyboard is clearly marked, keys are spaced far
apart (which avoids fat fingers like mine) and the keys give good feedback
on being pressed. And the calculator is slightly slanted so that when it's
on the desk it's easy to type on.

3. Floating point with fixed display of decimal places. Just right for
balancing your check book.

4. Hex/Dec/Oct/Bin modes plus the nice 'show' feature which can display a
number in one of the other bases for a few seconds without changing base.
Very handy when debugging.

5. And my favorite thing... the HP 16C is 128 mm wide and 79 mm deep. Notice
anything interesting? 128 ENTER 79 / is... 1.62. Or the Golden
Ratio<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio>.
No wonder I love that thing so much."


:o)

Cheers,

John Dunlop

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