There was a brief period through the 1960s into the 1970s when the last word in electronics was the calculator. New models sold for hundreds of dollars, and owning one made you very special indeed.

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 ...

Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, a scientist, a philosopher, a Christian writer and the son of a tax collector in 17th century France. The family business involved a lot of tedious arithmetic, so ...

In 1966, there were no cheap, reliable keyboards. The keyboards that did exist were too bulky and expensive to work for the calculator. Jim Van Tassel took on the task of designing a small, ...

When humans counted on their fingers, everyone had a state-of-the-art (at the time) calculator at all times. But as we got smarter about calculation, we missed that convenience. When slide rules were ...

Anyone who’s taken classes in geometry, algebra, trigonometry or other advanced math forms has certainly encountered the graphing calculator before. These multi-function devices make incredibly ...

Former CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He managed CNET's San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D ...