What calculator do engineers use?

pen and paper, yeaaaaaah

I always looked at the TI calculators with disdain and contempt. Then again, I love my old HP48G.

I even got the app to emulate it on my phone.

also, we used a casio cfx-9850g in school

@ragingloli Casio is a toy compared to the HP :p
RPN FTW!!!

I would not know, it is the only one I ever used. I still have it, it is like an heirloom now

My husband says he just used a regular calculator with all of the scientific functions. He never had the need to use a graphing calculator. Moreover no calculators were allowed on any tests and if at all allowed was only up to a TI-86.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/20531405?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=3&adid=22222222227015099674&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=40402683910&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=38014473070&veh=sem
This is more calculator than most engineers need. It’s the one that is allowed on all of the professional cert exams.

The gold standard used to be HP but Ti-89 series has been the go to calculator for the younger generation. An engineer’s education can usually be dated by the calculator they are using LOL. That said I usually use the ti-89 emulator on my phone.

Judging by some of the answers here, it seems that people are more concerned with passing their classes than with actual work.

Engineering is different from academia, and the really real world lacks the rules that most classrooms have. The biggest being that programmable calculators are often banned as they want the student to memorize all equations whereas in the really real world, all that matters is getting the right answer.

Of course, sometimes a specialty calculator is better. For my job, I use one of these as I don’t need 3D graphing, and functions that my 48G would require writing a program for are built-in functions. Of course, it can’t do Ohm’s Law, which my 48G has built into it’s equation library, as does the ElectriCalc; my HP is more general purpose, so it can do more different things even if it doesn’t do any one thing as well as something more purpose-built like my work calculator.

we were allowed to use the graphics calculator in our final exam. we even got a suite of math programmes installed on them to make the whole thing quicker.
Of course, the exams were made a lot harder to compensate for that.

Most of my exams back in school either forbid calculators completely or allowed anything. I remember if I ever had to rely on my calculator too much it was a bad sign. In work all I ever need is a basic scientific calculator. I know the ti-89 well so I use it most even if I’m only doing basic functions. I have recently shifted to the casio so I really know it well when I take the P.E. I wish I had used it in school instead of the Ti’s we were FORCED to use in early math courses. The Casio is obviously designed for actual work and has exactly what I need.

The HP scientific/engineering calculators rock! I’m a big fan of the stack-oriented RPN system of entering your numbers and functions (no ’=’ button! drives some people crazy).

But when doing real engineering work, how you do your calculations these days would certainly depend on the kind of engineering one is doing. A lot of engineering calculations have moved to matlab or autocad or SPICE-type analysis packages that you’ll use on your desktop computer.

@dabbler @jerv HP dates your degree to the 1990’s. Correct?

@ARE_you_kidding_me Before everything under the sun had a GUI, and spent more memory and processing power on functions than on icons and menus :D

@talljasperman The Ti-85 is still quite capable. I kept mine as backup when I was in school. The engineer in the office next to me still uses his routinely.

Keuffel and Esser Log Log 12 inch slide rule.

That was my father. the Construction Engineer who worked building refineries and chemical plants all over the world, used.

I still have my slide rule on my desk, along with the manual. My dad bought it for me when I took calculus in high school in 1953. But I was not designing bridges or refineries.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Not sure why HP calculators suggest the 90s.
I got my first HP calculator, a model 25 in my last years of engineering school in the very early 80’s. It cost a couple hundred dollars at that time and had a beautiful little bright multi-=segment LED readout. Before that I was using a K&E like @zenvelo and I think I still have one of the big yellow ones around here somewhere.

The HP scientific calculator I have now, a 15c dates back to the time I worked in the HP R&D labs in the mid-80s on their first RISC desktop computer (never got to market). I also use a 12c regularly and I think I have changed the batteries twice in all that time.

Fortunately I think HP still keeps their divisions relatively separate, especially from the commodity computer business, and the quality of their calculators and instrumentation is world-class. But, personally, I don’t buy HP consumer-grade computers or printers.

@dabbler I’m thinking strictly graphing calculators. An hp48 places you in the 90’s a ti-89 in the 2000’s & pre-90’s it’ll be some hp or ti scientific. My dad had an old hp and the writing on the keys was completely worn off but he could still use it. It almost never fails, I can seem to tell a great deal about when and what kind of technical training someone has based on the calculator they are using.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I bought my HP48G back in ‘96 to replace the 48SX that I used in school after it was stolen. Out CMM guy has an HP of similar age. Given how well HPs held up, I would guess that your dad got his HP sometime before HP was even founded; sometime around the Paleolithic era.

we were required by our school to buy the cfx-9850g in 10th grade.

@jerv I think it was an HP it could have been a TI. All the letters were worn off so how would I know?! I always was amazed how he was able to keep using it. I also have noticed how well the HP’s hold up. There are some around the office that are 30 years old and still work fine.

@ARE_you_kidding_me HPs have distinctive keys that have a meaty click to them. Most are brown, with the exceptions of the 48G (grey), 50G (lighter grey), and Prime (black). All three models are less than 20 years old though, so if it’s an HP that old, it’s brown.

I still use my HP-15c every now and then. It is older than some engineers we are hiring into my dept.

In my job I don’t use a handheld calculator. If I need to do some math I open IPython. I’m at the computer all the time so I don’t need a calculator I can carry around.

My coworker who does assembly and is consequently more mobile uses a little 4-function calculator.

The young’uns here use MatLab instead of a calculator.

I use a Casio fx260. I find it very easy to use.

Way back when I first started using a calculator, I knew some engineers who switched form slide rules to the HP RPN calculator. If you want to see how an RPN calculator works, check out this site

For anything really complex, I use the Wolfram Web site or I write a Python program.