HP-45 Owner's Handbook - Slide Rule Museum

Introduction
Little is understood about the methods used by calculating prodigies
to perform their awesome feats. The method used by 10-yearold
Truman Henry Safford in 1846 to calculate 365365365365
365365' (as described by the Rev. H. W Adams) shows that difficult
problems are difficult even for prodigies-" .. '. he flew around
the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the tops of his
boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes
smiling and talking and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in
not more than one minute said he, 733,491,850,208,566,925,
016,658,299,941 ,583,225!"
Although your HP-45 might not be as much fun to watch, it makes
calculating faster and less arduous, because the operational stack
and the reverse "Polish" notation used in the HP-45 provide the
most efficient way known to computer science for evaluating
mathematical expressions.
The HP-45 has far more computing power than previous pocket
calculators. Its accuracy exceeds the precision to which most of
the physical constants of the universe are known. It will handle
numbers as small as 10- on , as large as 10"", automatically places
the decimal point, and allows 20 different options for rounding the
display to provide greater flexibility and convenience in interpreting
results. The HP-45 provides you with transcendental functions,
such as logarithms, sines and cosines; polar/ rectangular
coordinate conversions for handling complex arithmetic, vectors;
selective operating modes; and multiple storage registers. Additionally,
constants for 'iT and e are provided- as well as three
metric/U.S. unit constants for conversions between centimeters/
inches, kilograms/ pounds, and liters/ gallons. Furthermore, statistical
capabilities for calculating the mean (arithmetic average)
and standard deviation are incorporated in the HP-45.
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