Form is temporary, function is permanent. The most important inventions are the ones that relate to the human condition, and they crop up over and over again. Below, Houston shares five key insights ...

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator. By Keith Houston. W.W. Norton & Company; 384 pages; $32.50. To be published in Britain in October; £25 WHEN WAS the last time you used a ...

When is a pocket calculator more than just a calculator? [Andrew Menadue] has been pushing the limits of his 1970s Casio FX-502P by adding all sorts of modern functionality via the calculator’s ...

We’ve seen so many explorations of older semiconductors at the hands of [Ken Shirriff], that we know enough to expect a good read when he releases a new one. His latest doesn’t disappoint, as he ...

Most people take calculators for granted, especially now that they’re built into our phones. But the noble pocket calculator has a long, surprisingly colorful history. The Twitter account Pulp ...

In 1976, Steve Wozniak sold his HP-65 programmable calculator for $500 to start a computer company with Steve Jobs. It wasn’t a huge sacrifice. As a calculator engineer at Hewlett-Packard, he knew ...

In his lively “Empire of the Sum,” Keith Houston looks at the best — and worst — years of the pocket calculator’s life. By Alexander Nazaryan When you purchase an independently reviewed book through ...

Jerry Merryman, a self-taught electrical engineer who helped design the first pocket calculator, died on Feb. 27 in Dallas. He was 86. His wife, Phyllis (Lee) Merryman, said the cause was heart and ...