Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator. By Keith Houston. W.W. Norton & Company; 384 pages; $32.50. To be published in Britain in October; £25 WHEN WAS the last time you used a ...

Form is temporary, function is permanent. The most important inventions are the ones that relate to the human condition, and they crop up over and over again. Below, Houston shares five key insights ...

In his lively “Empire of the Sum,” Keith Houston looks at the best — and worst — years of the pocket calculator’s life. By Alexander Nazaryan When you purchase an independently reviewed book through ...

If you predate the pocket calculator, you may remember slide rules. But slide rules take a a little skill to use. There was a market for other devices that were simpler or, in some cases, cheaper. One ...

When is a pocket calculator more than just a calculator? [Andrew Menadue] has been pushing the limits of his 1970s Casio FX-502P by adding all sorts of modern functionality via the calculator’s ...

Jerry Merryman, a self-taught electrical engineer who helped design the first pocket calculator, died Feb. 27 in Dallas. He was 86. C Cade Metz Follow His wife, Phyllis (Lee) Merryman, said the cause ...

Pictured above is the HP-35, Hewlett-Packard’s first pocket calculator and the world’s first scientific pocket calculator. The HP-35 was available from 1972 to 1975, and retailed then for $395 (more ...

LONDON - JANUARY 10: Sir Clive Sinclair launches his new electric vehicle the Sinclair C5, at Alexandra Palace, London on January 10, 1985. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images) (David Levenson via ...

It gave us the Walkman, the pocket calculator and heated toilet seats, but Japan's path to innovative greatness is littered with failures such as the TV-shaped radio and the "walking" toaster.

The humble pocket calculator may not be able to keep up with the mathematical capabilities of new technology, but it will never hallucinate. The device’s enduring reliability equates to millions of ...