The Hewlett-Packard Voyager series of

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-si ...

s were introduced by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

in 1981. All members of this series are programmable, use

Reverse Polish Notation Reverse Polish notation (RPN), also known as reverse Łukasiewicz notation, Polish postfix notation or simply postfix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators ''follow'' their operands, in contrast to prefix or Polish notation ...

, and feature continuous memory. Nearly identical in appearance, each model provided different capabilities and was aimed at different user markets.

Models

The

HP calculators HP calculators are various calculators manufactured by the Hewlett-Packard company over the years. Their desktop models included the HP 9800 series, while their handheld models started with the HP-35. Their focus has been on high-end scienti ...

Voyager series consisted of five models, some of which were manufactured in several variants (with years of production): *

HP-10C The Hewlett-Packard Voyager series of calculators were introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1981. All members of this series are programmable, use Reverse Polish Notation, and feature continuous memory. Nearly identical in appearance, each model ...

– basic scientific calculator (1982–1984). *

HP-11C The Hewlett-Packard Voyager series of calculators were introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1981. All members of this series are programmable, use Reverse Polish Notation, and feature continuous memory. Nearly identical in appearance, each model ...

– mid-range scientific calculator (1981–1989). *

HP-12C The HP-12C is a financial calculator made by Hewlett-Packard (HP) and its successor HP Inc. as part of the HP Voyager series, introduced in 1981. It is HP's longest and best-selling product and is considered the '' de facto standard'' among fin ...

– business/financial calculator (1981–present). *

HP-15C The HP-15C is a high-end scientific programmable calculator of Hewlett-Packard's Voyager series produced between 1982 and 1989. The "C" in the name refers to the continuous memory, such that the calculator retains it's state when switched off. ...

– advanced scientific calculator (1982–1989, 2011, 2023–present). * HP-16C – computer programmer's calculator (1982–1989).

HP-10C

The HP-10C is the last and lowest-featured calculator in this line, even though its number would suggest an earlier origin. The 10C was a basic scientific programmable calculator. While a useful general purpose RPN calculator, the HP-11C offered twice as much for only a slight increase in price. Designed to be an introductory calculator, it was still costly compared to the competition, and many looking at an HP would just step up to the better HP-11C. Poor sales led to a very short market life, making it one of the most difficult of the series to find today.

HP-11C

The HP-11C is a mid-range scientific programmable calculator.

HP-12C

The

is a popular

financial Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and Academic discipline, discipline of money, currency, assets and Liability (financial accounting), liabilities. As a subject of study, is a field of Business administration, Business Admin ...

calculator. It was such a successful model that Hewlett-Packard redesigned it from scratch, added several new functions, and introduced it as the HP 12c Platinum in 2003 as well as the HP 12c Prestige. Over the course of years, several anniversary editions of the calculator were produced as well. The HP-12C is HP's longest and best-selling product, in continual production since its introduction in 1981.

HP-15C

The

is a high-end scientific programmable with a root-solver and numerical integration, produced between 1982 and 1989. It is also able to handle complex numbers and matrix operations. Although long being discontinued its continued popularity among users triggered Hewlett-Packard to offer a HP 15c Limited Edition remake of the calculator in 2011 and a HP 15C Collector's Edition in 2023.

HP-16C

The HP-16C is a

computer programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

's calculator, designed to assist in

debugging In engineering, debugging is the process of finding the Root cause analysis, root cause, workarounds, and possible fixes for bug (engineering), bugs. For software, debugging tactics can involve interactive debugging, control flow analysis, Logf ...

. It can display numbers in

hexadecimal Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...

, decimal,

octal Octal (base 8) is a numeral system with eight as the base. In the decimal system, each place is a power of ten. For example: : \mathbf_ = \mathbf \times 10^1 + \mathbf \times 10^0 In the octal system, each place is a power of eight. For ex ...

and

binary Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two values (0 and 1) for each digit * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical op ...

, and convert numbers from one base to another. A number of specialized functions are provided to assist the programmer, including left- and right-shifting, masking, and

bitwise In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on a bit string, a bit array or a binary numeral (considered as a bit string) at the level of its individual bits. It is a fast and simple action, basic to the higher-level arithmetic operat ...

logical operations. HP has (as of 2015) never made another programmer's calculator, but has incorporated the 16C's functions in later calculator models.

Features

Arithmetic

Hewlett-Packard retained the numerical analyst

William Kahan William "Velvel" Morton Kahan (born June 5, 1933) is a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist, who is a professor emeritus at University of California, Berkeley. He received the Turing Award in 1989 for "his fundamental contributions to nu ...

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

, the architect of the

IEEE 754 The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic originally established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard #Design rationale, add ...

standard for

floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a Sign (mathematics), signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some Radix, base) multiplied by an integer power of that ba ...

arithmetic, to design the numerical algorithms implemented by the calculators. He also wrote parts of the manuals.

Programming

The HP Voyager series calculator are keystroke programmable, meaning that it can remember and later execute sequences of keystrokes to solve particular problems of interest to the user. These keystroke programs, in addition to performing any operation normally available on the keyboard, can also make use of conditional and unconditional branching and looping instructions, allowing programs to perform repetitive operations and make decisions. The available programming features differentiate between the various HP Voyager series calculator systems.

Legacy

The HP-12C and its derivatives remains in widespread use today and is still available from Hewlett-Packard. The long-discontinued HP-15C was re-released in a "Limited Edition" in 2011 that has again been discontinued. A ''Collector's Edition'' was released in 2023.

Emulators

Official emulators for the 12C and 15C are commercially available from Hewlett-Packard for Android and iOS devices.

Simulators

There are many calculators simulating software, imitating various HP calculators, including Voyager series devices. The WRPN Calculator, a

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open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

HP-16C simulator, is one of the oldest yet active software project of the such type.

Clones

In 2011, the continued popularity of the Voyager series among users prompted SwissMicros (originally called RPN-Calc) to produce a series of credit-card-sized calculators looking like miniature versions of their HP equivalents and running the original HP firmware in an emulator on a modern calculator hardware. The series consisted of the ''DM10'', ''DM11'', '' DM12'', '' DM15'' and '' DM16''. All calculators used the same hardware, but differ in keyboard and firmware (which can be changed with an upgrade port). After the introduction of the larger '' DM15L'', '' DM41L'' and '' DM16L'' in 2015, the ''DM11L'' was added in January 2016 with the '' DM12L'' following in February. A limited production run for a ''DM10L'' was planned for 2019.

References

External links

* * * MyCalcDB: *
SwissMicros
Manufacturer of HP calculator clones. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hewlett-Packard Voyager series Voyager series