In 1974 one of the hottest items that a science, math, engineering or psych student could get his mudhooks on was a slide rule calculator. This was the stuff of science fiction. In the early 1960's I read a comic book story where a spaceman landed on a planet that was a clone of Twentieth Century Earth, with the major city being New York, except for a few things, one of which was the discovery of coal as a "fewel" had not happened. Well he used the equivalent Earth tech to bring coal online as a fuel to power things, which would send that civilization up the fuel-efficiency chain and to a higher level of technological development. One of the things he used to figure the math out was a hand-held calculator; about 4x3x1 inches. About 13 years later, I owned what was probably the thing that he had. I used to go breezing through the Psych Dept at Providence college with my Texsas Instruments SR-50 acting like I rightfully owned the world: Well, between being a 1950's "spaceman", an Ayn Randian philosophy (which made me a hot property with the Philosophy, Religious Studies, Western Civ and English Departments), with an over-developed sense of humor and having a bit of hot computing gear, Didn't I? Ditto my post-grad years at Rhode Island College except now my "hot" tech was looking a bit shabby with the new programmable units hitting the market.
Back in the day the science, engineering and math geeks all had slide rules. I had a couple and knew how to use them. These things packed a comptational wallop. They could compute powers, roots, multiply divide and all kinds of things. Imagine me, who has trouble adding 5 rows of 3-digit numbers and nearly strangles on "Divide 48.3 into 593.83" whipping through exponents, taking two-wheel turns around logarithms and doing the quarter sine in 10.48 seconds.
Well, along came the integrated ciruit and it wasn't long before companies decided to make a calculator to function like a slide rule. Two of the leading companies were Hewlett-Packard, with the HP series that used Reverse Polish Notation, or, for short, RPN which fit perfectly with stack technology and Texas Instruments with the SR-50 series which used the "algebraic" system that inputted like a formula. I lost track of the upgrades and updates at the 56. The base and first one was the SR-50. The improvements were mostly programmability and automated statistical functions
This whole business began in middle 2003 when I became diss-satisfied with the onboard Widnows calculator. I found many of the keys unreadable. So I set out to find a better one. This was a tall order but I managed to luck into Earthweb Javascript and Javascript Source, died and went to calculator heaven.
I then built the Space Patrol website and the Terra V Rocket Cockpit and had modest success with that.
Then when I switched to the Mozilla FireFox browser, I discovered that I could not get my favorite Space Patrol calculator to work outside Intenet Explorer. Also in the process, I found some javescript app's that do other things like convert numbers from one base to another, Quardaratic equasions, the y=mx+b calculation and other conversions. What I could not find, I created by using the "reach out and touch someone" method. Usually I would link to a search page of relevent app's. This was for the following reasons; 1) I would find more than I could set up here. 2) If I link to just one site and it goes down, it's all over. 3) I do not know enough about some of this to be able to pick the best one so the the users can use their best judgement.
I have nearly finished work on a proposed add-on for the browser called the Space Patrol Power Console for FireFox. In the process of building the "Math & Sciencd cosole, I found two "scientific" calculators that resembled the ones from the mid and late 1970's. These were actually called "slide rule", (there were few if any real scientific calculators, the slide rule calcs got the name since they were found mostly in the science community), and grabbed them up. One is "algebraic", like the Texas Instruments TI's and the other uses Reverse Polish Notation aka RPN like the Hewlett-Packard HP's.
Having done that. I found that one of the so-called scientific calcs was a near clone of my old Texas Instruemtns SR-50. At this point I decided that I could do a 1970's redux, invented ZENTREX Advanced Numerical SystemsII Inc. (since bought out by Osaka Rubber Ltd, Japan and recently sold to Conham & Rippemoff Financial Group LLC.) and created for the Power Console the ZTR Advanced Slide rule Calculator-S50b by putting it in the left side of a table and putting on the right side the number base converter and the Fraction calculator. I then, seeing the full potential of this, 'forked" the project into the next generation ZTR-51/HyperAdvanced Slide Rule+ Calculator and that is what this is and this is where we are today.
My first fantasy calculator was the ZENTREX Advanced Numerical SystemsII Inc ZTR-S50b Advanced Slide Rule Calculator. It is no longer in existence, updated, upgraded to, and replaced by, this model. What set it apart, aside from being a workin fantasy virtual slide rule calculator is the "Advanced" which makes it the "b" version. When I set the ZTR-S50b up as part of the Space Patrol Power Console on it's own screen (which was superseeded by a more robust system), I found that I had some space left over so I heated it up. As it happened, I had some javascrpt math routines just kicking around. Now, if you value your sanity, never give me spare space and loose software unless you want something bizarre. The more advanced calcs of the '70's had built-in subroutines Sooo... I used the spare space to hold a number base converter, a proportion calculator and a fraction calculator. Another thing that sets the ZTR-S50b apart is the graphics. a realistic flat black finish and dark keys. BUT we've added something else, having many functions and being subdivided may require extra effort on the part of the user. In keeping with the best Ergonomics of the period. We've used graphics to indicate the subdivisions. Add to that a "real" owner's manual with extensive references and you have the giant-killer from 1975. Now, take the ZTR-S50b and put it on steroids with an additional keypad to call up the advanced functions Subroutines like a real deluxe 1970's unit, replacing the on-screen entry subroutines, and you have the 51. I took the S50b to BalCo and said "I want the cream and the clear, plus a Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens size order of Geometric, equation, graphing and conversions functions and an RPN mode, with full-out trig, arc and hyperbolic function: To go and Senator Mitchell can take a flying bleep at a rolling donut!". The "/Hyper" stands for hyperbolic functions. You can toggle between the Algebraic and RPN: That's right, you have BOTH; mode that does the heavy-duty trig, arc and hyperbolic functions; includintg secant, cosecant etc. AND use either as the default unit. so whether you're a TI or HP guy, we've got you covered. This would have cost you at least $370.00 in the Brown University Bookstore. Even the disply is like the old ones of higher quality.