The Wizard and the Woz. The greatest calculator story ever told starring Steve Wozniak and the HP-45

so i'd like to tell you a story about a calculator i randomly came across this thing at a thrift store having no idea what the hp 35 or in this case the hp 45 was all about so i'd like to tell you a story that i think is going to illustrate why this is important and that it did have some kind of influence on the personal computer revolution now what is the hp 35 well let me let one mr wozniak explain that real quick iphone 6 of its time the hp 35 scientific calculator introduced the hp 35 calculator and it was taken the world by storm it was causing dramatic social revolutions it was very clear that slide rules would be obsolete within a few years and they were i was so intrigued by this being the most incredible product i'd ever seen in my life so that gives us some context and we'll come back to the laws but what i think illustrates this even better is this story from andrew berg now he posted this in july 2000 on hp memories forum i can give a link to that below and it starts in 1971. for a high school graduation present his parents got him a beautiful slide roll that he unfortunately did not get to use as shortly thereafter he picked up a sharp four function calculator with a green fluorescent display and from there he says this i used the sharp for a while then in 1973 a guy showed me this hp 35 thing the data entry was weird but i cut out in a few milliseconds it was so natural i had to have one i sold my sharps for 70 to a student i was tutoring and i was able to buy that beautiful 35 used i didn't have the foresight or the money to see if there was an upgraded model the word upgrade didn't exist until microsoft came onto the scene many years later so i bought that 35 i think i paid 150 but it sure was worth it in 1975 i had a friend who also had one he said hey i know this guy give me your 35 and 50 bucks and he'll rewire it and turn it into a 45. i'm thinking what are you crazy give you my 35 and 50 bucks but he was a good trusted friend and the 45 was even cooler so a week later the calculators are ready but i did not want to wait to have mine shipped since i was a private pilot and we always need places to go i could fly up to san jose and get the calculators directly from this guy he was somebody working at hewlett-packard who designed calculators that's all i knew he had a few spare test chips or um quote leftovers and i got a great new calculator i met him at the airport and he was thrilled to death that i would take him up for a buzz then my father my traveling companion bought us all lunch and this hp guy had 43 cents in his pocket so my new friend steve from hp and i had fun he gave me spare parts and an old hp 80 that i repaired i even built an hp 55 too he visited me we played with modems vcrs in those days a box more than a cubic foot and other stuff one day we were hanging out and he says hey let's build a computer so he sat down on the living room floor and proceeded to do so i visited him and he showed me around at his other friend steve's garage and some circuit boards there his mother made his sandwiches and my friend from hp says hey andrew why don't you move up here and help me start a computer company and i said i'm not ready to move out of my parents house yet uh but i visited again and was impressed it was too late steve wozniak went on without me i never met steve jobs again but i hear he's been successful too so that is kind of an incredible story to me steve jobs mom sounds nice but poor andrew he missed the founding of apple by that much but i still recommend checking out the rest of his story i changed a couple parts but there are lots of interesting stories uh still left in that forum wozniak helped him program his 65 and uh there's a cool upgrade he talks about on the 45 it came with a stopwatch that was not documented because it was terribly inaccurate evidently there's some equation you can do that will compensate for it but i didn't quite get it to work so there is an upgrade that andrew did you can upgrade the crystal or you can install a crystal i should say and make that timer accurate so that is a feature that didn't come into later models and another little fun fact it is one of the first calculators to have a code name it's code name the wizard so yes i am endlessly amused by that we are discussing the wizard and the was here and i think you can see how some of these first steps towards the apple one happened wozniak used that same hewlett-packard storeroom to source parts for his apple and computer and he unveiled it like the next year to the public i went to hewlett packard and said look we can make a product you take the plastic case and a keyboard and a microprocessor and so much rom and so much ram you know it was sort of like our calculators that's what they were they had a microprocessor inside they had rom they had rayon and they had a keyboard that was on the instant you turned it on the keyboard was paying attention to it and a little display so this was just like a growth of calculators i said we could do it for 800 boy he was intrigued by what i said he lost sleep for weeks thereafter but he couldn't quite justify the use of the resources or that there wouldn't be technical problems or maintenance problems or support problems and he said it was now it was sort of the right thing for an outside company hp's legal department did a nice little three-day scan of all the divisions came back and said nobody at hp is interested so here's a legal release and that would not be the last time hewlett-packard turned down wozniak it is really unfortunate the amount of opportunities they had to work with him and get something started but still that place is full of history and interesting stories uh infamously wozniak sold his hp 65 to help pay for the first round of apple ones i guess he knew he was going to get the next model at a discount employee discount so yeah i just don't know that people are really aware that there is a machine a computing machine that predates the apple one that perhaps even in some small part but was partially designed by wozniak now he's not the lead engineer or anything but i just i think it's amazing for around thirty dollars plus shipping you can get what i consider is a very cool piece of history now i would recommend getting at least a power adapter and hopefully battery too if you can i got some newer ones they seem to work great so i think i can recommend that so check these things out i think they occupy a really interesting part um in computing history in my opinion so i think there's one last thing i want to cover with you um this is the internet and how do we know any of this is true well if i may i'd like to introduce you now to one myra berg now i found myra's story thanks to a blog post it's by john haskey i can link that below as well and he was intrigued by a photograph he saw of one of steve jobs old residences and there was some piece of art and he couldn't identify it and turns out it is from the 1983 gift catalog from apple and it is a piece of wall art that says it is from lead designer myra berg so there's some great confirmation right there that yeah the bergs did indeed know steve wozniak and steve jobs and i encourage you to check out the um actual blog post it's full of some fun 80s images and a couple of other great stories from myra and including a wonderful piece of art with some some cool tigers so oh that's very fun but yeah this i think has been just a wild ride for me going from a calculator to the foundings of apple one and all these other personal interesting stories so i hope you enjoyed it um i am always going to think differently of these calculators and their influence in the personal computer world so i'm curious if you have any great stories if anyone has any of these cool pieces of rug art definitely let me know um but yeah thank you for listening and and i hope to tell another one of these calculator stories soon

Channel: Eighty Eighty Eight

Views: 24,329

Keywords: wizard, woz, wozniak, hp, hewlett, packard, steve, hp45, apple, apple I, Apple II, hp35, hp-45, hp-35, hp-65, hp-55, hp-67, calculator, computers, retro, vintage, history, personal, computer, pc, 45, 35, 55, 65, 67, hwelet, hwelett, parckard, parkced, scientific, pocket, jobs, hewllet, hewlet, andrew, burg, myra, hp-3545, 3445, 3545, sharp, trinity, revolution

Id: nXO8yxsyO8U

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021