Friday, June 19, 2026

I'm not sure what's more embarrassing – that I forgot to fill in the intro and outro in the last newsletter, or that literally no one noticed. In any case, I won't make that mistake again this week! Which should be obvious, given that you're already reading the intro, but I guess you never know – maybe I forgot to do the outro again. There's only one way to find out...

Item 1: a link

The HP-01 Wrist Instrument (hereinafter the "HP-01") was one of the first commercially available calculator watches, released in 1977 and introduced in Hewlett-Packard's in-house magazine, the Hewlett-Packard Journal:

The concept of a combined watch and calculator is a natural outgrowth of today's digital watch and pocket calculator technologies. However, merely putting these two functions into one small case does not add significantly to the capabilities already available to the consumer. Only when the time and computation functions are allowed to interact freely can the full potential of the combination be realized and significant new capabilities be made available.

It is this interaction, along with state-of-the-art watch and calculator technologies, that provide the wearer of the HP-01 Wrist Instrument with information that was previously unavailable, and makes the HP-01, after a brief experience with it, more difficult to do without than it might at first appear.

The six-ounce HP-01 is the first of a new generation of wrist instruments. It has six interactive functions: time, alarm, timer/ stopwatch, date/calendar, calculator, and memory. It has 28 keys, six finger-operated and 22 operated by a stylus fitted in the watchband clasp, and twelve display modes or indicators. The HP-01 also comes with a pen that has a special stylus tip for operating the keyboard.

Like a lot of forward-thinking technology products, the HP-01 was wildly compromised and overpriced (it went for $450-850 in 1977 – $2,472.92-$4,671.07 in 2026 dollars), and was a commercial failure. Competitors surpassed it in the next few years with much more successful (and cheaper) versions of the same concept.

Techmoan did a fun video retrospective back in 2027, which ably demonstrates how complicated it was to actually use this thing (starting with the fact that you need to use a little pressy-inny stylus kind of thing to press the buttons):

If you want to read more after all that, here's a link to the The Museum of HP Calculators, where you can learn more about the watch's functions and read the manual. And if you just want to get one, they seem to be pretty easy to find for anyone with $3000-$5,000. But honestly, this Casio seems a lot more user-friendly.

Item 2: a list

Dole Mixed Fruit Cup Fruits, Ranked

1. Pineapples
2. Pears
3. Peaches

Item 3: a media recommendation

Item 4: word of the week

Pellicle

It's hard to pick just one worst thing about peeling a boiled egg, but for me it's probably the rubbery skin separating the shell from the food. Business idea: pellicle-less eggs.

Item 5: an image

See ya!

It appears I remembered this part.

Thanks for reading. If, for some reason, you enjoyed this, let me know. Or let someone else know. I'm trying to build a media empire over here.

See you in July.