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 ...

As a child during the late 1970s and early 1980s, I recall some of my classmates coming to school sporting digital watches with built-in calculators. With their microscopic buttons and tiny ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...