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 ...

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 ...

We’ve all got calculators on our phones, in our web browsers, and even in the home “assistant” that’s listening in on your conversations all day on the off chance you blurt out a math question is can ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Marking an album that foresaw the 21st century’s computer-addicted society, Kraftwerk dropped their own branded handheld synth decades ahead of the trend ...

Jerry Merryman, one of three men credited with inventing the hand-held electronic calculator, has died at the age of 86, the Associated Press reported. The Texas native passed away at a hospital in ...

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 ...