February 1, 1972
The world's first scientific calculator debuts. Made by Hewlett-Packard, the HP-35 is the first pocket-sized electronic device capable of performing advanced trigonometric and exponential functions.
As the story goes, HP co-founder Bill Hewlett threw down the gauntlet to his engineering team: make an HP-9100A that can fit in a shirt pocket.
The History Shapes
The HP-9100A was a desktop calculator that HP dropped a few years earlier in 1968 - - and it was a beast. It was the first ever scientific calculator that could do it all; trigonometric, logirithmic, and exponential functions. (It was so advanced that it was technically a computer, but the marketing team nixed branding it like one.)
Fitting all that computing power into a compact size took Hewlett's A-team roughly two years to crack. But by early 1972 the engineers solved the puzzle and HP premiered the now famous HP-35.
And yeah, it's said that the final dimensions were actually taken from Bill Hewlett's shirt pocket.
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