Podcast: Interview with David Cochran on the how of creating the first scientific calculator
Podcast | philmckinney | June 20, 2009 at 10:33 pm
This is the 1st in a series of interviews of individuals and teams who have created what I would consider killer innovations. In this episode, I recorded an interview with David Cochran, the original Product Manager of the HP35 calculator. Per the entry in Wikipedia:
The HP-35 was Hewlett-Packard’s first pocket calculator and the world’s first scientific pocket calculator (a calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions). Like some of HP’s desktop calculators it used reverse Polish notation. Introduced at US$395[1], the HP-35 was available from 1972 to 1975.
Market studies at the time had shown no market for pocket sized calculators. In about 1970, HP co-founder Bill Hewlett challenged his co-workers to create a "shirt-pocket sized HP-9100". Thus, the first ~12 HP-35 portable calculators were made as a "hack" by and for other engineers at HP. It is rumored that the development engineer got carried away and implemented a full suite of scientific functions to satisfy requests from his co-workers. When these prototypes proved popular, HP decided to turn the HP-35 into a commercial product. The HP-35 was the first calculator with a full suite of trigonometric and transcendental functions.
In the first months, orders were exceeding HP’s expectations as to the entire market size, which was 10,000 units per year. Before the HP-35, the only practical portable devices for performing trigonometric and exponential functions were slide rules. Existing pocket calculators at the time were only four-function, i.e., they could only do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
In this interview, David not only shares the history and how of creating the HP35, but also shares stories about Bill Hewlett, David Packard and others including Steve Wozniak.
Link to the MP3 of the June 20th podcast
Tags: bill hewlett, co workers, david cochran, david packard, desktop calculators, development engineer, exponential functions, first calculator, first pocket calculator, hp 9100, multiplication and division, pocket calculators, reverse polish notation, slide rules, steve wozniak, transcendental functions, trigonometric, wikipedia
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Great podcast! Can’t wait for the next one…
FYI – Another HP calculator innovation: Rather than silkscreening numbers on the keys (which can be worn off), HP manufacturing engineers created a way a dual-color injection mold process so the numbers could be molded into the key. I’m not sure in which calculator this first appeared, but it was a another first!
I really enjoyed his comments about “benches” and the impacts of proximity on working and innoavation.
Here’s my commentary on this podcast:
http://www.ddmcd.com/pocket.html
I loved this interview, and look forward to more like it. Hearing the comments straight from the mouth of the innvator gives a fresh perspective. Thanks!
I tremendously enjoyed listening to the interview both for its historical content and for the broader lessons that can be extracted about what conditions make a product development effort successful. I’d love to hear Phil interview more engineers who have worked on landmark products of the past. My only frustration with the interview was not having any background information about David Cochran. I’m surprised that Phil did not ask David how many years he’d be at HP before the 35, what projects he had worked on previously, which school he’d gone to, etc. The anecdote about how Hewlett essentially designed the calculator from the outside in and the story of Wozniak’s tenure at HP were the best segments.
I sent the podcast link to a staff member at the Computer History Museum, as the curators will want to include the interview in their audio collection. The Museum has often had evening lectures featuring the founders of Grid Computing, the founders of Compaq, the Fairchildren and so forth, and the Cochran interview will fit in well with those recordings.
I really enjoyed the interview Phil, and I hope you’ll do more like it. It’s impossible to hear too many success stories.
I am glad to talk with you and you give me great help! Thanks for that,I am wonderring if I can contact you via email when I meet problems.
I’ve listened to each episode from No 1 on and I must say that I really enjoy the “historical” ones.
I guess I’m an antique (or some type of engineer geek) too because I actually used an HP35 back then. I also used HP41C/CV and HP67s over the year. I still have an HP34C and an HP71B.
Great interview! I really enjoyed hearing the great stories that pass on lessons about how to innovation and think differently. Looking forward to the next interviews. Keep them going.
I wish I still had my HP-28S and HP-48SX. I loved working with them in school. They were so much fun.
great podcast. Please do moren interviews like this with innovators. This on has several gems. Resizing the desk drawer, creating the mock-up to encourage progress, and one man championing his vision.
I was travelling on a train when I listened to your interview podcast. Very interesting “news” from the past. E.g. that it were times without budgets when such great innovation was born.
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I couldn’t help to lough out loudly when David Cochran told the story with the calculator fitting to the boss’ desk
Phil, please do more such interviews. We can learn a lot..
It is interesting. It was a great achievement in those days. As a matter of fact, I was one of the first to buy this caculator and the first one released by HP.
Howevever, if you talk to people who created wonderful innovations recently, it will be more interesting.