In this day and age of tablets that have screens with over three million pixels, it’s easy to forget the humble pocket calculator, one of the world’s first examples of mobile computing. The New York ...

Form is temporary, function is permanent. The most important inventions are the ones that relate to the human condition, and they crop up over and over again. Below, Houston shares five key insights ...

If you spend any time around technology, and probably even if you don’t, then you’ll probably also have heard some variation on the saying, “There’s more computing power in your pocket than was used ...

We’ve seen so many explorations of older semiconductors at the hands of [Ken Shirriff], that we know enough to expect a good read when he releases a new one. His latest doesn’t disappoint, as he ...

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator. By Keith Houston. W.W. Norton & Company; 384 pages; $32.50. To be published in Britain in October; £25 WHEN WAS the last time you used a ...

Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Jerry Merryman, one of three men credited with inventing the hand-held electronic calculator, has died at the age of 86, ...

Curt Herzstark's fate seemed to be sealed in 1943 when the Nazis sent him to Buchenwald concentration camp. But then Herzstark, the son of a Jewish industrialist, received the unexpected opportunity ...

Before there were pocket calculators there were nuclear-age slide rules. These circular cardboard calculators, shown on the Oak Ridge Associated Universities Web site , measure all kinds of things ...

An 'exceptionally rare' pocket-sized calculator from the 17th Century is expected to attract £100,000 at auction. The Arithmetical machine is one of the first mechanical calculating devices known to ...