I like rabbit holes and the unexpected places they can lead.
Picked up a rather dirty Hewlett-Packard 45 calculator at the recyclers this weekend.
What immediately drew me to it was the red segmented display, and the old style keys.
As it turns out, the HP 45 was the second scientific calculator model that HP launched in 1973, and final production ended in 1976. HP 45 history
After a complete disassembly and cleaning up the insides and the switch corrosion, I replaced the original rechargeable battery with a 3.7v Lithium cell. Build quality was exceptional, and the unit powered up without any further problems. Even managed to download the original instruction manual from HP’s website for this model.
Apart from the 1948 manual hand crank calculator I picked up a while ago, this is definitely one of my nicer finds.
Nice find! My dad had a similar model that I ended up playing with as a child (I was born in the 1980s, can’t remember if I played with it end of 80’s or beginning of 90’s). I specifically remembered playing with it and discovering that if I press FN-4 it would beep.
My dad never knew the thing had a speaker/buzzer, so till this day I have no idea why it had the feature if nonething else seemed to use it? And why would you need to have a key combination to make it beep??
I loved the feeling of the keys!!
But I could have sworn it had an LED Bubble display yet I can’t find one that has a beep
This is the closest I could find - HP-41C
