50th Anniversary Limited Edition

A friend of ours was kind enough to loan me her HP-14B 50th Anniversary Limited Edition calculator. Thank you, Joanne! I was really jazzed by the opportunity because I never held the 50th Anniversary LE HP calculator in my hands! And for a pretty good reason, since these limited edition calculators – the HP-14B and the HP-32S – were only available to HP employees to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Hewlett-Packard company (1939-1989). The calculators were sold for only $50. I am not versed in using HP’s business models, so it was intriguing to play around with the machine. If physically the 14B and the 32S look alike, the 14B is not an RPN calculator. It is a bit odd to upfront, but you get used to it quickly. By decoding the serial number of the machine, we know that it was produced in the US during the 16th week of 1989, and has a serial number of 30,375. Other special editions were produced by HP. Few of them were available for sale to the general public.

The two most recent ones I am aware of are the HP-12C 30th Anniversary Edition (for its 30 years of production), and the HP-15C Limited Edition (re-issued on the fan’s request – and yes, I signed the petition “bring the HP-15C back”).