An Engineer and his (or her) Calculator

I've been meaning to write this article for a long time.  Some engineers are very particular about the calculator that they use and I am no exception.  Some people like those HP RPN style calculators, and some people prefer a graphing calculator.  I have always stuck with something simpler, a Sharp scientific calculator.  I got my first good scientific calculator in High School in 1991 or 1992, and it was a Sharp EL-506D shown below. 

I used that calculator all the way through College in 1997 and it still works great today.  In one statistics class the professor actually "required" that everyone use a TI graphing calculator.  Once I started to realize that my lowly Sharp had all of the statistics functions in it that we were going to use, I decided not to get a new one, and quietly figured out how to make mine do everything it needed to do to get through the class.

When I graduated college I decided to get a new calculator when I started my job, and stuck with Sharp since I had such good luck with it.  I got a Sharp EL-546L shown below. 

This calculator was a little hard to get used to at first since it requires that you enter functions algebraically.  For example, to take the Cosine of 90 degrees on a traditionally calculator you type 90 and then press the Cos button.  On the new style you press the Cos button first and then the Cos function name appears on the screen, and then you type 90.  Obviously in this simple example it doesn't make much difference, but in more complicated calculations, like when you want to take the Cosine of some number that requires several other operations, you have to remember to press the Cos buttun first, then open parentheses and type the rest of your operations just as you would write them on paper.  Actually once you get used to doing it this way it makes more sense and is easier, but 10+ years of calculating experience is a little hard to undo!  This calculator has served me very well for almost 10 years, through a masters degree and many engineering projects, and it just recently stopped working. Some of the character lines on the LCD screen do not light up anymore.

In 2005 I decided to get a new Sharp calculator so that I could have two at home and one for work.  A good scientific calculator is always useful to have close at hand.  I got a Sharp EL-506W shown below.

 This calculator is very similar to the EL-546L.  The one notable difference that has taken some time to get used to is how you switch between scientific, engineering, and decimal notation.  I really like this calculator.

All of my Sharp calculators have been very inexpensive (approximately $20, although I can't remember clearly the cost of the first one).   I'm guessing that they have provided at least as much value as any $100+ graphing or HP calculator for far lower cost.  Based on how I've seen many of the high end calculators used in high school and college, I'm guessing these Sharp calculators have provided much more value than many of their expensive counterparts.

Now that I'm back down to 2 functioning Sharp calculators, I'm searching for a new one again.  In looking at this Sharp Web Site , it looks like the EL-506W is still the most advanced standard scientific calculator.  It looks like the same models with different organization are on the Sharp USA web site and I noticed that they have calculators geared toward all age groups for education, so I might need to introduce the kids to their first Sharp calculator soon.