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An electronic pocket calculator with a seven-segment liquid-crystal display (LCD) that can perform arithmetic operations A modern scientific calculator with an LCD. An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics.
A scientific calculator is an electronic calculator, either desktop or handheld, designed to perform calculations using basic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and advanced (trigonometric, hyperbolic, etc.) mathematical operations and functions.
BASIC notation is a particular implementation of infix notation where functions require their parameters to be in brackets. This method was used from the 1980s to the 1990s in BASIC programmable calculators and pocket computers.
The pocket-sized Hewlett-Packard HP-35 scientific calculator was the first handheld device of its type, but it cost US$395 in 1972. This was justifiable for some engineering professionals, but too expensive for most students. Around 1974, lower-cost handheld electronic scientific calculators started to make slide rules largely obsolete.
Friden made a calculator that also provided square roots, basically by doing division, but with added mechanism that automatically incremented the number in the keyboard in a systematic fashion. The last of the mechanical calculators were likely to have short-cut multiplication, and some ten-key, serial-entry types had decimal-point keys.
A simple arithmetic calculator was first included with Windows 1.0. [5]In Windows 3.0, a scientific mode was added, which included exponents and roots, logarithms, factorial-based functions, trigonometry (supports radian, degree and gradians angles), base conversions (2, 8, 10, 16), logic operations, statistical functions such as single variable statistics and linear regression.
Such software calculators first emerged in the 1980s as part of the original Macintosh operating system and the Windows operating system (Windows 1.0). Some software calculators directly simulate one of the hardware calculators, by presenting an image that looks like the calculator, and by providing the same functionality.
The on-board BASIC variants in TI graphing calculators and the languages available on the HP-48 series can be used for rapid prototyping by developers, professors, and students, often when a computer is not close at hand. Most graphing calculators have on-board spreadsheets which usually integrate with Microsoft Excel on the computer side.