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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

In 1976, Steve Wozniak sold his HP-65 programmable calculator for $500 to start a computer company with Steve Jobs. It wasn’t a huge sacrifice. As a calculator engineer at Hewlett-Packard, he knew ...

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 ...

While we might have started out using our fingers and toes to count, humanity has been busy designing machines to help with calculations for hundreds of years. From early counting devices to modern ...

The device's enduring reliability equates to millions of sales each year for Japan's Casio Tokyo: The humble pocket calculator may not be able to keep up with the mathematical capabilities of new ...

Clive Sinclair, who invented the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, an early personal computer, died of cancer Thursday at age 81, his family confirmed. Sinclair was an inventor with an impressive list of ...