🔬 Fun Historical Fact: The First Scientific Calculator Was a Moonshot of Its Own!

In 1972, Hewlett-Packard released the HP-35, the world’s first handheld scientific calculator—and it was such a game-changer that NASA engineers ditched their slide rules for it. Before the HP-35, scientists and engineers had to rely on bulky desktop machines or manual tools like the slide rule for complex calculations like logarithms, trigonometry, and exponents.

The HP-35 could do all that in your hand—and it was named “35” because it had 35 keys. It was so advanced for its time that Bill Hewlett challenged his engineers to shrink a desktop calculator into a shirt pocket. When they succeeded, it cost $395 (about $2,700 today), but it sold like wildfire—especially among engineers, physicists, and astronauts.

🚀 In fact, the HP-35 was used in space missions and became a symbol of cutting-edge tech. It was the iPhone of its day for the scientific community