HP Innovation Issue 20: Spring 2022 | Page 62

1967 Industrial designer and San Francisco native Roy Ozaki was integral to the design of the HP9100A desktop calculator , shown here in a 1967 photograph of the device ’ s first clay model . Ozaki was interned with his family at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming during World War II , but after the war he enlisted in the US Army as an interpreter . After graduating from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena with an industrial design degree , he worked for IBM , Whirlpool , and Goodyear before joining HP . The HP9100A was described as a “ powerful computing genie ” that was the first personal computer and the catalyst for the personal computing revolution . Bill Hewlett himself took an active interest in its development , using much of his free time to monitor it after a skiing accident landed him in a hospital . But even though the HP9100A was essentially a desktop computer ( weighing in at 40 pounds and costing $ 4,900 ), it was never marketed as one . Hewlett explained : “ If we had called it a computer , it would have been rejected by our customers ’ computer gurus because it didn ’ t look like an IBM [ computer ]. We , therefore , decided to call it a calculator , and all such nonsense disappeared .”
Remember When

1967 Industrial designer and San Francisco native Roy Ozaki was integral to the design of the HP9100A desktop calculator , shown here in a 1967 photograph of the device ’ s first clay model . Ozaki was interned with his family at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming during World War II , but after the war he enlisted in the US Army as an interpreter . After graduating from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena with an industrial design degree , he worked for IBM , Whirlpool , and Goodyear before joining HP . The HP9100A was described as a “ powerful computing genie ” that was the first personal computer and the catalyst for the personal computing revolution . Bill Hewlett himself took an active interest in its development , using much of his free time to monitor it after a skiing accident landed him in a hospital . But even though the HP9100A was essentially a desktop computer ( weighing in at 40 pounds and costing $ 4,900 ), it was never marketed as one . Hewlett explained : “ If we had called it a computer , it would have been rejected by our customers ’ computer gurus because it didn ’ t look like an IBM [ computer ]. We , therefore , decided to call it a calculator , and all such nonsense disappeared .”

— Andrea Bell-Matthews
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HP INC .
HP / INNOVATION / SPRING 2022 60