This is a reminder to me that it doesn't matter how great your idea is, or how technically impressive your product is. If the execution isn't right (in this case, who wants to do math awkwardly on their wrist with a tiny, hard to hold stylus? A calculator is much more comfortable) nobody will buy your product.
I had a Casio calculator watch that also included a video game for the ultimate in nerd entertainment. From what I remember, it consisted of scrolling numbers that you had to enter before they reached the edge of the screen, like in a typing tutor.
What I liked most about my watch was that it included many different alarm tones. I must have driven my parents crazy with those beeps.
HP-01 was code named "Cricket". I found out some answers but I still don't quite get what it meant by "all of Cricket's technology". Are they referring to the insect Cricket? What technology are they talking about?
> From the minutes of a product planning meeting: "A suggestion was made to put all of Cricket's technology into an elegant, truly pocket size calculator selling for around $250. It would have an LED readout, 10 keys, 2 ROMS, timing functions and do about '40 things'. The appearance of the package would do justice to the selling price. This suggestion prompted an immediate lack of enthusiam [sic] and was seconded by no one thus inhibiting further serious discussion." This was a suggestion to "save" Cricket (HP-01) which was highly controversial. The meeting recap/action item related to Cricket was: "Pray for Cricket."
As the original article mentioned, they spent a lot of resources miniaturizing the math circuits for the relatively unsuccessful Cricket watch. This is talking about their idea to "save Cricket" and get some more value out of the work they put in by transplanting all of the internals of the watch into a separate pocket calculator product which might be more successful than the watch.
Particularly destroying the workings of an unsuccessful product line, where others could have learned and progressed the design. But it was the 70's and sharing of knowledge has changed significantly since then.
This comment may not have much meat to it, but HP was famous for their excellent graphing calculators, which used RPN input format. They were fun to program as well and started many a young nerd of the 90's on the path to making software.
HP's use of RPN actually predated their graphing calculators by quite a bit starting with, in pocket calculators, the HP-35 in the mid-1970s. (Apparently it was used in desktop calculators prior to that.) I've used RPN since I got an HP-55 and still use an RPN calculator app (emulating an HP-41) on my iPhone.
The calculator market really hasn't scaled in price like the rest of the general purpose computing world... pretty amazing that the exact same TI-83 and HP48's used ten years ago are still selling for nearly the same prices they were then.
The HP-01 is the one and only watch I would ever wear. Sure it's big and clunky but it's so freaking cool, in a nerdy way. The $1k+ price tag is the only thing that has detered me. This is the ultimate gift for the nerd who has everything.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 61.7 ms ] threadWhat I liked most about my watch was that it included many different alarm tones. I must have driven my parents crazy with those beeps.
> From the minutes of a product planning meeting: "A suggestion was made to put all of Cricket's technology into an elegant, truly pocket size calculator selling for around $250. It would have an LED readout, 10 keys, 2 ROMS, timing functions and do about '40 things'. The appearance of the package would do justice to the selling price. This suggestion prompted an immediate lack of enthusiam [sic] and was seconded by no one thus inhibiting further serious discussion." This was a suggestion to "save" Cricket (HP-01) which was highly controversial. The meeting recap/action item related to Cricket was: "Pray for Cricket."
http://www.hpmuseum.org/collect.htm#codes
The days when a 32KB upgrade module costed what would be now around 100 euros.
The only RPN calculator watch I'm aware of is the uWatch which is out of production apparently http://www.calcwatch.com/.