Looking strictly at the functionality and capacity, the more equal competitor would be the TI-57. The HP-25 was regarded as a competitor to the TI-58 and TI-58C calculators offered by Texas Instruments.
It used the same trapezoid profiled keys introduced with the HP-65. The HP-25 was about 25% smaller than the HP-65.
Engineering calculator with prefixes manual#
The owner's manual came with 161 pages in four colors and contained many mathematical, scientific, navigational and financial programming examples. Additionally there were eight storage registers and specialized scientific and statistical functions. It was the first HP calculator which used fully merged keycodes (storing prefix key and function key together in one program location) to save memory space. The HP-25 had memory space for up to 49 program steps. The HP-25 used a 10-digit red LED display and was the first calculator to introduce the "engineering" display option, a denormalized mantissa/exponent format where the exponent is always a multiple of 3 to match the common SI prefixes, e.g. A small sliding switch was used to change between "run" and "program" mode. Nearly all buttons had two alternative functions, accessed by a blue and yellow prefix key. Like all early HP calculators, the 25 used the Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) for entering calculations, working on a four-level stack (x,y,z,t). The model HP-25C, introduced in 1976, addressed that shortcoming through the first use of battery-backed CMOS memory in a calculator, termed continuous memory by HP.
After switching off, the program was lost and had to be typed in again. To reduce cost, the HP-25 omitted the HP-65's magnetic card reader, so it could only be programmed using the keyboard. The HP-25 was introduced as a cheaper ( US$195 MSRP) alternative to the ground-breaking HP-65. The HP-25 was a hand-held programmable scientific/engineering calculator made by Hewlett-Packard between early January 19.