In this day and age of tablets that have screens with over three million pixels, it’s easy to forget the humble pocket calculator, one of the world’s first examples of mobile computing. The New York ...

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 ...

Soon will come a day when you’ll meet a brilliant conversationalist at a party and have no idea that you’re talking to an implanted computer chip. Whenever you hear a person wishing for ice and snow, ...

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator. By Keith Houston. W.W. Norton & Company; 384 pages; $32.50. To be published in Britain in October; £25 WHEN WAS the last time you used a ...

Most people take calculators for granted, especially now that they’re built into our phones. But the noble pocket calculator has a long, surprisingly colorful history. The Twitter account Pulp ...

When is a pocket calculator more than just a calculator? [Andrew Menadue] has been pushing the limits of his 1970s Casio FX-502P by adding all sorts of modern functionality via the calculator’s ...

We’ve seen so many explorations of older semiconductors at the hands of [Ken Shirriff], that we know enough to expect a good read when he releases a new one. His latest doesn’t disappoint, as he ...

Aristos is a Newsweek science and health reporter with the London, U.K., bureau. He is particularly focused on archaeology and paleontology, although he has covered a wide variety of topics ranging ...

I spent two nights last week wearing 3D glasses in a dark theater, watching four German men in reflective Spandex bodysuits sing about computers, transit, and architecture. The electro-pop godfathers ...