RCL 20: People, Dreams and HP Calculators [Paperback]

Technical people are often not very good storytellers. The chapters of 'RCL 20' are a pleasant exception.

You don't have to be a 'calculator nut' ... to understand the incredible excitement that these machines brought to their owners.

any HP calculator fan will find it entertaining and enlightening

This book marks the 20th anniversary of the Handheld and Portable Computer Club with reminscences by club founders, HP engineers and others of how HP calculators and portable computers have been bringing people together and changing their lives. Before the web, before PDAs, before PCs, one company provided a vision of how computers and software could change lives when put into the hands of ordinary people. Hewlett-Packard's amazing series of hand-held calculators and portable computers, begun in 1972, has introduced a generation of technically-inclined people to personal computing power. As these tiny computers have grown in capability to be depended on in space missions and on battlefields, people around the world have banded together in so-called 'user groups'. Through these, they've exchanged information, solved each other's problems, and enjoyed learning about (and playing with!) computers. In the process, they've also made friendships, started businesses, and contributed to the computing environment we live in today.

One such user group, the Handheld and Portable Computer Club (HPCC), started in Britain in 1982 as an off-shoot of the huge US-based group PPC, and is still active twenty years later. This book celebrates the twentieth anniversary of HPCC. Inside: we see what the future of portable computers looked like in 1978; HPCC founders and members write about the club, and remember those members who have passed on; the founders of HPCC, PPC and other clubs discuss what they have learned by starting and running them; the engineers of HP's calculators reveal their thoughts on the company and its products; fans of HP's smallest computers explain what they find so special about them.