Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: First hand-held calculator
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (387) · February 1st, 2008 · 2 Comments
Today in History – February 1, 1972 – First scientific hand-held calculator, the HP-35, introduced for $395. I was an undergraduate in engineering when the HP-35 was released. I couldn’t afford to buy one and stuck with my slide rule. But the next year, I gave in and bought the next model, the HP-45 and it was well worth the money at the time. The calculators were easy to use, portable and reliable. The market responded by developing cheaper calculators, while Hewlett Packard kept the cost high and increased the functionality.
Check out the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on the electronic calculators and history of computing. For more educational resources, see our electrical engineering education and computer engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.
Tags: Computer Engineering · Computer Science · Computing · Information Systems · Information Technology
2 responses so far ↓
1 Engineering Education "Today in History" Harvard Mark I largest electromechanical calculator ever built // Aug 7, 2008 at 8:16 am
[...] vision in launching the first hand-held calculator, the HP-35 on February 1, 1972. See my February 1 blog on this event for more details. And check out Gordon Bell’s blog on the introduction of the [...]
2 » Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: Harvard Mark I largest electromechanical calculator ever built » NSDL Pathways News // Aug 8, 2008 at 3:34 pm
[...] vision in launching the first hand-held calculator, the HP-35, on February 1, 1972. See my February 1 blog on this event for more details. And check out Gordon Bell’s blog on the introduction of the [...]
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