Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: the sixth power of nine.

Shortly after the Apollo 11 moon landing, Jim Stoll wrote the first video game to run through a calculator.

"Houston, this is Jinghai Base. Eagle landed successfully."

Armstrong's phone call with the Earth on the Moon

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11, left human footprints on the moon for the first time. On television, an American high school student named Jim Storer witnessed the historic moment with viewers around the world.

The Apollo Navigation computer (AGC) used in the Apollo program is the first computer in the world with a silicon-based integrated circuit as the core. It helps the Apollo program succeed through real-time data processing, navigation and control of the lunar landing spacecraft.

Since then, microelectronic technology has become an important part of the third industrial revolution, driving human civilization into a new 21st century. Today, when our handheld game consoles for entertainment have evolved from Mattel Sports to the latest Nintendo Switch, does anyone think that there was a group of hackers who loved to study electronic products and tried to play games with hand-held calculators?

The Eagle lunar module during the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Mattel electronic handset series, the originator of handset in the 1970s.

Moon landing: it all started with a bold idea. Shortly after the Apollo 11 moon landing, Stoll, a student at Lexington High School, wrote "Lunar Landing Game"-"Moon landing" in the FOCAL programming language on a PDP-8 microcomputer made by Digital equipment Corporation (DEC). Stoll then posted the game to DEC user Newsletter (DEC users' newsletter) and distributed the source code to readers.

Screenshot of the earlier version of "Moon Landing"

In 1973, running on PDP-11, the "moon landing" portable version of the GT40 vector graphics display terminal could be controlled with an integrated stylus.

The game of "landing on the moon" is just like its literal meaning, the data entered by the player is processed by the computer and calculated into a series of equations as the parameters of the lunar landing spacecraft to simulate landing on the moon.

In more than 40 years after the game was released, various versions of "landing on the moon" have been reimplemented in various computer languages and widely adapted to various computer platforms. Although in the decades that followed. Stoll doesn't know anything about these moon landing games, but the impact is so far-reaching that even platforms like calculators, such as Hewlett-Packard's HP-25, are not missed.

The HP-25 is a handheld programmable scientific calculator made in 1975-1978, using a 10-bit red LED (light emitting diode) display. Although there is no data transfer interface, it has a RAM and multiple registers that can store 49-step keys. Its program is not so much a program as a "keyboard macro" that stores the calculator's keystroke input sequence.

Introduction to this product in the HP-25 manual

The play of "landing on the moon" in HP-25 and its Chinese translation

At that time, the calculator games represented by various "moon landings" were limited by the crude hardware of hand-held calculators, the playing method was too "hard core", and there was almost no graphic display, and the so-called games were only for engineers and hackers as a pastime. But like the feat of landing on the moon itself, people's bold initiative of playing games with calculators was affirmed, which gave endless inspiration to later generations.

North American classroom Game Star in 1985, Microsoft released the Windows 1.0 operating system, Steve Jobs officially resigned from Apple and Super Mario Brothers was released. At the same time, Casio released its first "graphic calculator", the fx-7000G.

The fx-7000G is the first graphical calculator to be put on the market, opening up a new field for the development of handheld calculators. It has a 96 × 64 pixel LCD (liquid crystal) display with 422 bytes of space for storing programs. In addition to the computing functions of general calculators, its LCD is more able to draw a variety of statistical charts and user-defined graphics. It is precisely because of the intuitive nature of graphics, calculators not only as a productivity tool in the field of engineering, but also become a teaching tool for all kinds of engineering disciplines, and began to enter the classroom.

Fx-7000G

At the same time, Texas Instruments, which later monopolized the North American graphics calculator market, joined the research and development of graphics calculators.

In 1993, following the launch of the TI-81 graphic Calculator in 1990, Texas Instruments released the same education-oriented graphics calculator, the TI-82, which uses a 6-MHz Zilog Z80 processor. Z80 was launched in the 1970s, is an improved product of Intel 8080, lower price, simple structure, very suitable for research.

Because it provides data transmission interface and assembly language support for the first time, it inspires the enthusiasm of users to use calculators for program development. Although the program developed with assembly is more efficient and powerful, no matter how simple Z80 is, assembly language is not so easy to learn. However, even if you do not know how to assemble, it is relatively easy to write some simple games in the built-in BASIC-like language, and after you have written the program, you can transfer the program between calculators through the data interface.

At a time when the Internet is not yet popular, this face-to-face sharing has promoted the development of the calculator community and attracted more people to "play with" calculators. Today, when kids who play cool games on the "TI" series of graphic calculators graduate, sharing programs on calculators and playing calculator games in class have become their common memories.

Although the Game Boy went on sale in North America as early as 1989, playing with calculators is still the best way to fish in class-it's not a wise decision to put the Game Boy on your desk in class. Students are also enthusiastic about the development of calculator games. After all, who doesn't want to write a cool and fun game on a calculator and send it to their classmates to show off?

TI-82

TI-83 Plus, an upgraded version of TI-82 's subsequent model TI-83, which provides users with a piece of Flash flash memory that can install better programs written on computers through communication ports (photo source: Popsugar @ CHELSEA ADELAINE HASSLER)

TI-83 Plus runs Fruit Ninja

"TI" graphic calculator is the default configuration of most math and engineering textbooks in North America, and it is very popular in the field of education in North America. Since the 1990s, a large number of schools have purchased "TI" calculators and matching experimental sensors for students and laboratories. Therefore, although its configuration has been almost unchanged since its launch and has been expensive, its holdings abroad are huge, as it is today. It can even be said that graphic calculators are for American high school students, such as "May 3" for Chinese high school students.

Although the hardware level is backward, the foreign calculator community still maintains a considerable scale today, in which most of the members are junior and senior high school students, and how to touch the fish on the calculator is still one of the main topics. However, now that students have more choices, they still have less spare time to delve into calculators-there is not enough computer knowledge accumulated in a small circle of young people whose average age may be less than 20 years old. it is difficult to conduct in-depth study of calculators.

Since the calculator screen has no color and backlight, the resolution is only 96 × 64 pixels, even the English alphabet can display only a few lines, and most of the programs are written by students in class or in their spare time, calculator games at that time were too crude in their present eyes. But in the eyes of some people, these features make calculators more "Vintage", thus attracting some retro enthusiasts to come into contact with the calculator community.

TI-84 is the successor to TI-83 and still uses Zilog Z80 series processors

The TI-84 Plus appearing in the hardware technology channel LinusTechTips video shows the popularity of the "TI" graphic calculator.

Pac-Man running on TI-84 Plus C SE

Doom on the calculator goes back to three years ago when TI-82 was released. In 1990, Hewlett-Packard launched the first product of the HP-48 graphic calculator, the HP 48SX, which uses the Saturn microprocessor developed by HP.

The HP 48 calculator is a product for high-end users and supports a stack-based programming language RPL. It is considered to be a combination of inverse Polish expressions (RPN) and Lisp expressions, with a very cool feature-no parentheses!

A high degree of openness and this very "cool" programming language have inspired hackers to develop calculators. In 1995, a porting version of Doom was released on the HP 48 platform, making HP 48 the first calculator to run Doom.

HP 48SX has a 32KB RAM, a 131 × 64 gray screen and a buzzer.

HP 48GX runs Doom. In addition to regular serial communication, it can also communicate with infrared (used as a remote control).

In the same year that Doom was released on HP 48, Texas Instruments released the TI-92 graphics calculator, which uses a 10MHz Motorola 68K processor.

Because of the QWERTY keyboard, TI-92 not only looks like a personal computer, but also is classified as a personal computer by the relevant examination institutions in the United States, and is prohibited from being used in all kinds of exams. For this purpose, Texas Instruments has also produced TI-89 and TI-89 Titanium products with similar configurations but standard keyboard layouts, which are released for the education market.

The TI-92 was probably one of the calculators that looked most like a personal computer, and the screen resolution was the highest among the calculators at the time.

The misfortune for the students is the great luck for the hackers. The "TI" calculator does not impose any restrictions on community research, the famous 68K processor lives up to the expectations of hackers, and open platforms allow all kinds of software to emerge in endlessly (including the transplanted version of Doom, of course). Although the screen will have a certain drag phenomenon, but with this 240 × 128 high-resolution screen as the canvas, hackers have full room for imagination.

I myself had the privilege of getting a TI-92 upgrade version of Voyage 200that upgraded 188KB memory and added 2.7MB flash memory, and what impressed me most in its game was a transplanted version of Galactic Warrior.

Voyage 200runs the migrated version of Super Mario

The transplant version of Doom running on TI-92

Voyage 200runs "Galactic Warrior"

A SLG game made by netizens to run on TI-92 (photo source: @ diameter)

Casio, the maker of the first graphical calculator, is not far behind in the face of challenges from Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard.

In 1996, Casio launched a new product, CFX-9850G. Its CPU uses a custom Hitachi HCD6212 with unknown parameters, and its most interesting thing is that it has a color that supports the display of orange, blue and green "false color" LCD-- is a mixture of three colors of polarizer, the principle of producing color is similar to grayscale change. Despite being called a "false color", the CFX-9850G actually became the world's first graphic calculator with a color screen.

Due to the lack of data, the calculator's software is developed with built-in BASIC, and the results of community research are very limited (even reverse engineering has not been successful in obtaining its CPU frequency). As the first color screen graphic calculator, it didn't make much of a stir. But interestingly, the use of a color screen does not increase its power consumption, which is the same as the battery life of the previous FX-9750G, so this color screen is an addition.

CFX-9850GB PLUS

In 1999, Casio launched Algebra FX 2.0 on the basis of CFX-9850G and its derivative models (referred to as AFX 2.0, the previous model AFX 1.0 was not popular due to design problems).

Probably Casio thought the "false color" LCD was too chicken, and AFX 2.0 changed it back to monochrome LCD. The most interesting thing about AFX 2.0, however, is its processor. AFX 2.0 uses a NEC V30MX processor that runs on 8 MHz and is compatible with the Intel 80186 instruction set, which allows it to run ROM-DOS--, a variant of the MS-DOS system designed for embedded devices.

On the programming side, in addition to the built-in CASIO BASIC, it also supports programming in C and Pascal. Because of its unique processor, many programs on the DOS platform (including many DOS games, of course) can run directly on AFX 2.0. In view of this, we can think of AFX 2.0 as a very interesting handheld personal computer.

AFX 2.0 PLUS, which mainly enhances some mathematical functions compared to AFX 2.0 (photo source: cnCalc Calculator Forum @ stj2002)

"Sonic" running on AFX 2.0 PLUS (Photo: YouTube@EnvoySoft)

AFX 2.0 PLUS runs the Yuanzu game "pong" (photo source: @ X230 Green Pepper)

AFX 2.0 PLUS runs a masturbation game (photo source: @ X230 Green Pepper)

ARM era: the field of graphics calculators has also been deeply affected by the popularity of color, portable and other ARM processors that focus on high energy consumption ratio on all kinds of handheld devices.

In 2007, Texas Instruments released a Nspire graphics calculator for the education market, using a custom 90MHz ARM9 processor. It is needless to say that devices using ARM processors are very popular in handheld consumer electronic products we use today. its relatively powerful configuration naturally inspires hackers' enthusiasm for research. 320x240pixel high-resolution grayscale LCD is also very beneficial for playing games.

TI-Nspire ClickPad, the button layout is unique.

Because of market positioning, Texas Instruments did not disclose any programming support, except for the built-in BASIC and later added Lua, to ensure that students would not use calculators to cheat on exams, but that didn't stop hackers. Through the research on Nspire, hackers launched Ndless-- jailbreak software for Nspire and provided a set of SDK (software development kit) to enable Nspire to run various software written in C, C++, assembly and other languages.

Ndless Project Logo

The GBC simulator can be run through Ndless,TI-Nspire ClickPad

The transplanted version of Doom, which runs on TI-Nspire TouchPad (replace the navigation keys with a touchpad), has serious screen remnants (photo source: bilibili @ Gordon freeman)

Texas Instruments will not allow the Nspire to become a game console, and the vulnerabilities exploited by Ndless will be fixed every time the system is updated, but hackers can always make a comeback after studying new firmware. In a later release, Texas Instruments plugged the loopholes by updating the hardware, forcing hackers to redevelop new models.

In 2011, Texas Instruments launched the TI-Nspire CX graphics calculator, which not only upgrades the processor frequency to 132MHz and increases storage capacity, but also upgrades the screen to color and the dry battery to rechargeable lithium battery. In 2019, the new TI-Nspire CX II was released, the processor main frequency was updated to 396MHz, the other parameters were basically unchanged, and the applications were backward compatible.

TI-Nspire CX and TI-Nspire CX II, navigation keys can also be used as a touchpad

TI-Nspire CX school version (with the word School Property on it, everything else remains the same)

Between 2011 and 2017, with Ndless's follow-up to TI-Nspire CX, the calculator community ushered in another spring-Ndless lifted restrictions for hackers, and all kinds of homebrew software were released like a blowout, including simulator software written by various celebrities. Nspire uses a screen ratio of 4 to 3 and a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels. It can run all kinds of games without adjusting the display scale. The more powerful hardware also makes all kinds of simulators run smoothly and have a good experience.

TI-Nspire runs Flame medallion through the GBA simulator (photo source: @ diameter)

TI-Nspire runs "alloy gear" through the GBC simulator (photo source: @ diameter)

Having a simulator means that there are almost unlimited game libraries, and simulator games are considered to be the pinnacle of the playability of calculator games. Students use calculators with built-in BASIC to play games in their spare time, so it's nice to entertain themselves in class, but all aspects of quality are obviously inferior to those issued by commercial companies.

However, there are two shortcomings in playing these simulator games on the calculator: first, the calculator does not have audio output (although it is not suitable to make sound when the game must be played with a calculator); second, because the TI-Nspire keys are designed with key shrapnel (also known as pot chips), the key range is short and hard, and the operator feels a certain impact.

While the foreign calculator community actively publishes all kinds of software and carries out research, the developers of the domestic community have also released a large number of software on the TI-Nspire platform, including the peer games produced by "RPG Maker" and the transplantation of "Chinese Paladin".

The netizen transplant version "Chinese Paladin" running on TI Nspire CM-C, the Chinese version of TI-Nspire CX (photo source: cnCalc Calculator Forum @ ZephRay)

The color of the game "reverse electromagnetic Cannon" created by netizens is displayed in grayscale on TI-Nspire 's grayscale screen (photo source: @ diameter)

In the ARM era, Hewlett-Packard is also gradually switching to ARM processors.

At first, the Saturn processor chips used in the HP 39Comp48 series were produced by NEC. After the Saturn was discontinued, Hewlett-Packard, in conjunction with Kinpo in Taiwan, developed an ARM-based "Saturn+" simulator to simulate Saturn processors on ARM devices.

In 2006, Hewlett-Packard released three graphic calculators: HP 50g, HP 39gs and HP 40gs, the former for the engineering market, supporting SD cards and upgrading the screen resolution, and the latter two for the education market with similar configurations. All three calculators use Samsung's 75 MHz S3C2410A ARM9 processor, and Saturn + simulator is used in order to be compatible with programs from previous platforms, resulting in low computing efficiency and high power consumption, but some enthusiasts have made SDK to provide support for C language program development. These C language-based programs can run directly on the real machine and increase the processor frequency to 200MHz (it should be pointed out that it is limited by the speed of SRAM. The effect of simple processor overclocking is limited.

HP 50g, HP 39gs and HP 40gs

Due to price reasons, HP 39gs is very popular in China. The picture shows HP 39gs playing Super Mario (photo source: @ plum blog)

HP 39gs Chinese Reader developed by netizens (picture source: Baidu Tieba @ zqr9987)

In 2011, HP released the HP 39gII graphic Calculator, which uses Freescale's 80 MHz STMP3770 ARM processor. The firmware, though rewritten, is a semi-finished product. Later, official developers came out to explain that the development had shifted to new products, thinking that the launch of TI-Nspire CX was also during this period, and it is speculated that HP gave up its support for HP 39gII under pressure from Texas Instruments to launch new products at the same time. Due to the low firmware completion, the HP 39gII real machine experience has so many Bug that someone has made a Bug list for it.

HP 39gII

HP 39gII has a high-resolution grayscale LCD (image source: @ diameter)

In 2013, HP redesigned the hardware based on HP 39gII's imperfect firmware and launched a new product of standard TI-Nspire CX, the HP Prime graphic Calculator.

The original version of the HP Prime comes with Samsung's 400 MHz S3C2416XH-40 ARM9-based processor and a color multi-touch screen. In addition to the high-end hardware, there is another big selling point: it transplants Xcas, an open source math software that runs on personal computers. In 2008, HP Prime2018 released an updated hardware version G2, with processors upgraded to NXP i.MX 6ULL MCIMX6Y2 based on the ARM Cortex A7 528MHz. Unfortunately, because it is mainly aimed at the education market, it still does not have a first-party or third-party SDK available at the time of this writing, so HP Prime can only use the system's built-in BASIC-like language, HP PPL.

HP Prime v1

Although the system is relatively closed, HP Prime is not inferior to TI-Nspire in various specifications, and the HP PPL language is enough to write all kinds of interesting games. However, due to the lack of relevant development tools, hackers are not interested in HP Prime, the number of games is small, and the game picture is relatively crude. Although HP PPL provides the ability to interact with the touch screen, there are not many games that use the touch screen function. After all, most people are used to using smartphones with larger screens.

The HP Prime is the only product currently in production, and HP fans in the calculator community have been calling for it to be more open by introducing programming languages such as Python. As a result, in the firmware update pushed this year, HP Prime added support for some Python syntax.

3D Tetris on HP Prime

"Flappy Bird" on HP Prime

"beating bricks" on HP Prime

The calculators around us have turned their attention to China. In the past few decades, there have been numerous calculators around us.

Unlike markets such as the United States and Europe, when it comes to Chinese calculators, we have to mention the "tide card" in people's eyes-- Casio. If you factor in the variants that copy Casio, Casio has a monopoly in China's handheld calculator market just as Texas Instruments does in North America.

After the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan in 1972, Japanese enterprises became the first batch of foreign-funded enterprises to enter the Chinese market by virtue of their geographical and policy advantages. In 1980, Casio Electronic Calculator entered China, and Casio later established a Beijing office in 1985.

In 1999, Casio fx-82/991 SX became the first scientific calculator to enter China. From then on, we can buy Casio's scientific calculator at the snack bar at the school gate and at Xinhua Bookstore across the country.

Fx-991SX

Casio has a more far-reaching impact on the fx-82/991TL, which was launched in 2000, and the fx-82/991MS Scientific Calculator, which was launched in 2003.

As the official product of the people's Education Publishing House and some exams, I believe readers must have seen a long list of examples of calculator key sequences in math books. They use fx-82/991MS scientific calculators, and as a result, fx-82/991MS is widely copied.

Fx-991MS, there's a solar cell in the upper right corner.

Limited to product positioning is a learning tool for primary and secondary school students, this kind of scientific calculator only provides a few variables and limited mathematical functions, and does not provide programming functions at all. For most people, the only entertainment of this scientific calculator may be limited to rolling dice with random numbers or comparing hand speed, so they are jokingly called "the first antique of young people" by some players who study graphic calculators.

However, because the initial version of fx-82MS left a large number of test contacts on the circuit board, interested parties connected them with pencil smear, successfully upgraded the low-end model fx-82MS to the high-end model fx-991MS, and unlocked the corresponding functions, thus opening the trend of Casio calculator cracking.

Fx-82MS takes advantage of hardware vulnerabilities to upgrade, and the fun of cracking calculators is more attractive than the upgraded features (photo source: cnCalc Calculator Forum @ stainless steel)

Although Casio quickly fixed the hardware loophole, it didn't stop the bored students in class. In 2005, Casio released the fx-82/991es Scientific Calculator, abandoning segment display and using dot matrix displays. Although limited by the low-end software and hardware of scientific calculators, witty Chinese students have successfully "invented" a unique form of game represented by "killing of the three Kingdoms" by exerting their strong imagination. What is more, through the specific key input to cause calculator failure, to achieve a variety of "explosion machine" play.

Fx-350es is an upgraded version of fx-82es. The shell and font have been changed.

The killing of the three Kingdoms on fx-991es confirms that the best graphics in the world are created by imagination (photo source: cnCalc Calculator Forum @ Zms)

Exploiting software vulnerabilities, fx-991es PLUS realizes computer explosion (photo source: cnCalc Calculator Forum @ zyy)

Under a coincidence, a netizen found a technical manual from a manufacturer of calculator chips and found that the manual mentioned scientific calculators when illustrating the scope of application of the chips, and fx-82es was used in the drawings. As a result, netizens boldly guessed that this is the main chip used by fx-82es.

After consulting the manual, netizens found that the input voltage supported by this chip is higher than the 1.5V muri used by fx-82es-up to about 4V. As a result, netizens boldly connected the calculator with an extra button battery. after that, the computing speed of the calculator was significantly accelerated and the overclocking of fx-82es was declared a success.

Netizens dig up chips encapsulated with COB (also known as "cow shit") (photo source: amobbs@cqsrmxxzyx)

OKI ML610901 single-chip microcomputer manual used by fx-82/991 es

Fx-82es overclocking: use transparent glue to glue the wire to the button battery, and then roll the wire to the battery contact (photo source: @ yls)

These scientific calculators, which used to be widely sold offline, are also available today at stationery stores outside the school gate, giving more people access to Casio calculators or variants based on Casio.

In addition to the fx-82/991 series of scientific calculators for middle school students, Casio also sells 9860 G / GII for colleges and universities and engineering mapping and fx-CG Prizm for international examinations in China. These machines use SH3 or SH4 processors developed by Hitachi and are supported by first-party or third-party SDK. They can use C, C++ and other high-level languages for software development. Naturally, game development will not be let go.

Intentionally or unintentionally, Casio did not learn the lesson of escalation of exploited vulnerabilities on fx-82MS. The relatively cheap low-end model fx-9750GII can be upgraded to fx-9860GII through brushing machines, and the "9860" series of graphic calculators are very popular in the domestic calculator community, which is one of the reasons.

Fx-CG50 and fx-9860GII SD (SD means SD card can be used)

The 3D Demo created by netizens on fx-9860GII SD can move the perspective (photo source: @ diameter)

Screenshots of fx-CG Prizm running games

Use the simulator to play "Legend of Zelda: dreaming of the Island" on the European version of fx-CG50, Graph 90.

In addition to game development, there are also many people in the domestic community trying to write e-book software for the "9860" series of calculators. Although foreign netizens have also written a lot of e-book software, the software interface is all in English, so it is inconvenient to use, and Casio did not add coding support such as GBK to the calculator. Therefore, the research on how to add Chinese characters to calculators has become one of the research directions in the domestic community. Through the unremitting efforts of netizens, the desire to use "9860" to read novels has finally been realized.

Reader developed by netizens (photo source: cnCalc Calculator Forum @ wu58430)

Finale: calculator and Moon Landing 52 years have passed since the first handheld calculator was launched in Japan in 1970. For a long time since then, handheld calculators have become one of the battlefields of the latest mobile device technology experiments, which has played a significant role in promoting the development of microelectronics technology (an interesting fact is that Intel invented the first microprocessor 4004 for the calculator of the Japanese company Busicom). For a while, the handheld calculator market is in full bloom.

In the twinkling of an eye, manufacturers who once made calculators stopped the research and development of new calculators, or went bankrupt in the "calculator wars" that fiercely competed for the market in the 1970s, or turned to the production of other consumer electronics. Around the world, only a few manufacturers are still developing new calculators. Under the background of the great development of contemporary microelectronic technology and mobile device technology, the computing speed and replacement speed of personal computers, mobile phones and even web calculators are much higher than those of handheld calculators. The latest smartphone, which is changed every year or even half a year, is the darling of the latest technology.

Even iPhone 6, released a few years ago, can easily run the simulator of the current highest configuration graphical calculator.

Except for players for collection and research purposes, people buy physical calculators almost solely for study or work needs (exams or field work in the surveying and mapping industry). As a result, almost all the new calculators launched in recent years are aimed at the education market, and many of them have added support for Python.

In writing this article, I was lucky to find a big shot (@ diameter) who has written a lot of calculator games. When talking about why he wants to play with a calculator, he says the reason is simple, because he can't afford a UMPC. At that time, not many people in his school could afford a smartphone, so he had to buy a fx-9750GII programming to pass the time.

"I remember buying the first fx-9750GII in 2009 or 2010," diameter said. My place is a township middle school, and the earliest iPhone I have ever seen in my class is the 3GS, and there are only a few people who have smartphones. In the second year of senior high school, the business hall began to send junk Samsung Android phones with QVGA screens, and during the summer vacation everyone discussed which one to buy from ZTE. Before graduating from high school, smartphones became so popular that everyone could have one. Even if Geek wants to do something different, mobile phones are a better platform to showcase technology than calculators. "

"if I had been worthy of iMac and iPhone, maybe I would have developed iOS App." Diameter said half-jokingly, "in the final analysis, we are still poor."

Diameter graduated from school a few years later. Although he doesn't have much time now, he still collects calculators as one of his hobbies.

Diameter's current partial calculator collection (photo source: diameter)

It may be a little hard for us to understand why diameter plays calculators these days-cheap smartphones, the latest games readily available online, and online novels and online dramas. Even students no longer have only calculators to play with. What is the point of these brick-heavy calculators except for testing and displaying style? Diameter also says he clearly feels the calculator community is in decline because of the popularity of smartphones. He seems to accept all this calmly: "anyway, it's just fun, and the users are the people in the forum, and they come and go."

Recalling the "black history" of that year, diameter concluded: "Calculator, just play with it a little bit. Don't take it seriously. I cheated my girlfriend by taking pictures, but not with calculators."

Over the past half a century, although games centered on "Moon Landing" have been released on multiple platforms, its original author Stoll, now a professor of computer science at Brandeis University in the United States, mentioned in a 2009 interview: "until a few months ago, someone e-mailed me about this, and I fully realized that except for the game I wrote in high school. I haven't played any "moon landing" games. "

The transplant version of "landing on the moon" written in Flash

Also in 2009, HP-35 Scientific Calculator won the IEEE Electrical Engineering and Computing milestone Award.

Launched on February 1, 1972, the HP-35 is the first handheld scientific calculator in history-it can operate trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions directly, and formally pronounced the death penalty with extremely high accuracy (even more accurate than that of most mainframe computers) and convenient use.

Six versions of HP-35 on display at the 2009 IEEE ceremony

Today, the glorious era of calculators is a thing of the past. In the future, with the development of mobile technology, will we one day sentence calculators to death? When that day will come is unknown, but I think the calculator community and calculator users will still exist for some time to come, and as long as this group exists, they will continue to consume all kinds of calculators. Just in the absence of first-party support and the lack of a large number of developers to provide quality software, this circle will eventually disappear into the corner of the Internet and reality, becoming a common memory of those players.

Times have changed, and I hope your belief in exploration will never change-just like landing on the moon.

NASA astronauts use HP-65 calculators to run programs by inserting paper tape

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