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HP Calculator Comparison Tool
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Welcome! This "tool" is provided as a resource for those interested in HP calculators and struggle to find consolidated information for your model of interest.
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There are 153 different models tracked with another 16 cosmetic variants known.
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A cosmetic variant is different colour schemes or changes to case, like LCD bezel, but not an underlying hardware or firmware difference.
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This has come about from my own deep dive into the rabbit hole that is HP Calculator History after being introduced to them when studying engineering in the 90s and since with my financial services career.
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I found Steve Simpkin's excellent work documenting the early RPN models and I have used this as a starting point to expand into the later models Steve hasn't covered, and then it snowballed from there.
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Steve's continued work on documenting his models of interest can be found here
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This is provided as is where is; it probably has errors and some of the links provided will expire and disappear over time.
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The data for many calculators is complete, however some still need tracking down and assessing. At this time the data for the listed calculators is about 94.21% complete.
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If you find an error or expired link; Go to the data tab find the error cell / link, right click, select "Comment" and add a comment so that I can track it down and see if we can correct it or find a replacement link
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Making this work:
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For those less familar with Google Sheets, you will struggle to use this tool if you are browsing on your phone from a social media link or the standard browser, to get the best from this on your mobile device you will need to download the Google Sheets app.
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What are all the tabs?
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Comparison Tab: This tab will provide you the ability to compare up to 10 calculators side by side, it pulls though the data from the Data Sheet tab.
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Please do not add comments to this tab for any errors found, they won't stick to the data point as the selection above changes.
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The initial models selected on this page aren't any particular selection, more they are the last person using the tool.
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Filtered HP Timeline: Something I cooked up that will provide you a timeline view of the models selected in the Comparison Tab to see release dates and model changes over time.
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Data Sheet: Where all of the information, links, etc are consolidated.
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HP Release Timeline: like the filtered time line except this is all models in the Data Sheet
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Reference Links: Sites that I have found useful both with the specific model data referenced that also have more extensive coverage of the HP Calculator history. There is some excellent work with these sites and they make the rabbit hole a real warren to get lost in!
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Serial Number Tool: A serial number decoding tool to determine Country, year, and date of manufacture. This will use both the 1960 and 1996 serial number format decoder as well as the later 2010ish change in serial number formats. The tab also has a 20 unit serial number tool to allow you to do bulk decodes and the next tab allows you to print out a clean report of those 20 units
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Multi Serial Print Out: This is a dedicated tab to allow you to print off the bulk serial number "labels" produced from the bluk serial number tool on the tab.
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HP Related Patents: Patents I have come across that are not attributed to a specific model of calculator
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HP-41 Docs & Ref: Given the extensive amount of work punlished around the HP41 range I have taken the list of works across the 4 listings and consolidated this into a single list of links to help manage any duplication if you're trying to track down everything for the range.
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HP-48 Docs & Ref: Like the one for the HP-41, Given the extensive amount of work punlished around the HP48 range (not as much as the HP-41 btw) I have taken the list of works across the main HP-48S/SX/G/GX/G+ listings and consolidated this into a single list of links to help manage any duplication if you're trying to track down everything for the range.
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Overall it is intended to collate and share this information with the HP Calculator collector community, as such if there is a particular data point you want included in the comparison please comment and I'll see what I can do to add it in.
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While I haven't noticed a lot of concurrent users if you find that there are others trying to use the comparison tool at the same time, take a copy for your own purposes (File, Make a copy) so your viewing doesn't conflict with other users. You will need to take manual copies to keep your local copy up to date as this won't sync or replicate once copied.
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While every effort has been to tabulate correct data.
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There are areas of this data set that has been added with the expectation others know better than myself. Some of which has changed with better knowledge and access to documentation that is constantly being found by collectors.
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There are some conflicts around exact dates of release, the best documented data has been relied on. Which gives priority to HP published material.
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The simpler office models have been included for completeness, not necessarily because the author finds them interesting. Frankly, I find them quite dull.
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Some clones have also been included, given there is on going development with a number of projects, particularly with SwissMicro and C47.
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GDPR & Privacy
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No specific information is collected from those that use this tool other than what Google will track in the course of their operations for the sheets application and I do not have access to that data.
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The tool will retain the last users selections for the comparison tool, not that this specifically means anything to anyone but that user.
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