The museum thread
Why this brand matters
HP's calculator history is unusually coherent: each generation treated the keyboard, notation and programming model as part of the machine rather than as replaceable decoration. The lineage runs from LED scientific calculators through continuous-memory programmables, the Voyager family, RPL graphing systems and finally ARM-based machines that preserve the old user environment.
For the museum, HP is also a case study in platform continuity. A user trained on RPN, the stack and dense shifted key legends could carry those habits forward for decades even while the underlying CPU architecture changed completely.
Major machines and families
This is a historical map of the machines relevant to this museum's story, not merely a list of the models currently emulated.
| Period | Machine / family | Why it belongs in the story | Museum status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1968 | HP 9100A | Desktop programmable calculator; an important pre-microprocessor ancestor of personal scientific computing | Not yet emulated |
| 1972 | HP-35 | Made a pocket-sized scientific calculator a practical professional instrument | Not yet emulated |
| 1974–1976 | HP-65 / HP-67 | Magnetic-card programmable calculators that turned personal calculation into a reusable software medium | Not yet emulated |
| 1979–1983 | HP-41C / CV / CX | Alphanumeric, expandable, programmable RPN platform with a major professional software ecosystem | Not yet emulated |
| 1981–1982 | HP-10C / 11C / 12C / 15C / 16C — Voyager | Slim continuous-memory family spanning general scientific, financial, advanced scientific and programmer roles | Playable |
| 1982 | HP-75C / 75D | Portable BASIC computers with full keyboard, display and card/peripheral expansion; HP briefly followed the general-purpose handheld path as well as the calculator path. | Not yet emulated |
| 1984 | HP-71B | Pocket BASIC computer with an unusually rich language and expandable environment; a direct HP counterpart to Sharp and Casio pocket computers. | Not yet emulated |
| 1987–1988 | HP-28C / 28S | Early RPL calculators and a bridge from classic RPN programmability to object-based symbolic work | Not yet emulated |
| 1990–1993 | HP 48S / SX / G / GX | Saturn-based RPL graphing family; the 48GX represents the mature expandable engineering workstation | Playable |
| 1999–2003 | HP 49G / 49g+ | CAS-oriented successors that carried RPL into faster hardware and new connectivity | Not yet emulated |
| 2006 | HP 50g | ARM-based successor preserving the RPL environment while changing the processor generation | Playable |
| 2013– | HP Prime | Modern colour touchscreen graphing/CAS platform; outside the playable era of the current collection | Not yet emulated |
Continue the story
Hewlett-Packard in context
Brand histories overlap: CPUs, operating systems, standards, classroom adoption and software ecosystems routinely crossed manufacturer boundaries.
Technical specifications and chronology on this manufacturer page are intended to remain traceable to original documentation and established archives. See the source path for this family →