Programmable calculator

Programmable calculators are calculators that can be programmed like computers for the processing of complex calculations.

History of development

Special milestones in the development of programmable calculators ( some features were introduced in non- programmable models first ) were:

In the early days competing programmable calculator with slide rules and calculators simple so that the quality computers were popular especially among scientists and engineers and for numerous technical and ( to a limited extent ) business issues have been programmed. In the late 1980s, LCDs were low and more and more graphics-capable calculator came on the market, at the same time grew an ever stronger competition from the spreadsheets on PCs approach that ultimately the distribution and thus also the development and sales of new generations of programmable calculators slowed. Significant new developments are therefore not to be expected in this area.

Technology

Programmable calculators have an internal memory in which programs can be stored, which can simplify or automate complex calculation processes. The input of such programs is the keyboard of the calculator in a specific program input mode. Due to the mostly simple displays in calculators (previously only one line for displaying numbers, nowadays usually multiple rows ) is limited to the editing of programs on scroll commands (a program command before, a program command back in the display), the insert, overwrite and delete commands. Early calculators did not allow for entering letters, so that only the key commands could be used on the keyboard. The programming was close to the machine, that is, there were storage registers and program registers explicitly used ( "Save 5 in memory register 3 ": 5 STO 3 in UPN; " Jump to program line 78 ": 78 GTO, etc.). Programmable calculators, which are also well graphics capability, but already now offer text editors often with some quite extensive functionality for this purpose ( and also often have no special programming mode ).

Programs were initially even in the calculator, are later stored on magnetic cards and other storage media. Often modern calculators are also able to communicate with computers. This makes it possible to design programs ready for the calculator on your PC or to download from the Internet and transfer them to the calculator using a special transfer cable.

Application

The range of potential applications is very large. From mathematics programs and geometry programs to play almost every genre is represented in programs. For programming the computer, a large area display is helpful, can be displayed on multiple lines of source code simultaneously.