 The first screenshot, printed in the 1979 Touch the future" brochure by Atari, Inc. | |
| Other names | Calculator |
|---|---|
| Original author(s) | Carol Shaw |
| Developer(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| Initial release | 1979; 46 years ago (1979) |
| Written in | Assembly |
| Platform | Atari 8-bit,6502 |
| Successor | Colleen Calculator |
| Service name | CX-8102 (Atari)APX-20130 (APX) |
| Standard(s) | RPN |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Mathematical software,Financial calculator,Programmable calculator,Software calculator |
| License | Proprietary |
Atari Calculator (orCalculator) is aproprietary software program developed byAtari, Inc. forAtari 8-bit computers and published in 1979. It incorporates the functionality of ascientific calculator into asoftware calculator. It was written inassembly language by Americanprogrammer andgame designerCarol Shaw. The program supports multiple modes, including enabling it to be used as aprogrammable calculator with a then-popularreverse Polish notation (RPN) input method.
In 1977, theCalculatorcomputer program was developed byCarol Shaw at Atari, Inc.[1][2][3][4] In 1979, the screenshot of theAtari Calculator, with the titleATARI CALCULATOR COPYRIGHT 1979 in the main window, was printed in the"Touch the future." brochure on the screenshots gallery page, featuring the upcoming Atari 800 computer. TheUI was colored in light bluish text on a dark blue background.[5] In the same year, the"Calculator: Instruction Manual" book was printed, and program got productID numberCX-8102. On the screenshots of the program, printed in grayscale in the manual, the title in the main window changed toCALCULATOR COPYRIGHT (C) ATARI 1979.[6]
In 1981, theCalculator was marketed in the "Atari Personal Computer Product Catalog".[7]
Calculator. With this program, your ATARI Personal Computer becomes a powerful, 145-function programmable calculator.
— Atari, ATARI Personal Computer Product Catalog, 1981
In September 1981, theAtari Calculator was marketed in theAtari Connection magazine, in the section for new business and professional applications:[8]
More than a simple handheld calculator, the ATARI Calculator combines features found in scientific, business, and statistical calculators. [...] Package includes a manual, one program diskette, and one blank diskette. Suggested Retail Price: $29.95. Estimated Availability: November 1, 1981.
— Atari, The ATARI Calculator, Atari Connection, Fall 1981, Volume 1, Number 3
| External image | |
|---|---|
 Calculator: Computer Program Diskette (box cover) |
During 1981—1982, it was distributed in two variants, by Atari, Inc. itself and by theAtari Program Exchange (APX) department,[9][3] in the form of boxeddiskette, together with theAtari DOS 2.0, for theAtari 8-bit computers.[10][11]
In June 1982, the"Calculator: Instruction Manual" book was printed by the APX, noted with"User-Written Software for Atari Computers" on the cover, and the program got product ID numberAPX-20130.[12] In the same year, productCX-8102 was listed in the"Atari Home Computer Product Catalog". On the screenshot, printed in color in the catalog, the colors of the UI were changed from dark blue to reddish brown, the output line colored in black with gray text, and the input line colored in light bluish colors.[13]
After 1982, there was little news about theAtari Calculator, its development, and it was excluded from the listing in the next official catalogs by Atari.[14][15][16]
On 12 October 2011, Benj Edwards,[17] a tech reporter and historian, published on the"Vintage Computing & Gaming" site thetranscription of the interview with Carol Shaw, who left Atari after 1980.[10] During the interview, there was revealed details about theAtari Calculator origin and development:
I also did a calculator for the [Atari] 800. It wasn't a game. [...] It's called Calculator. Basically, we bought a handheld programmable calculator that had financial functions and scientific functions, and so you would be able to program this thing. [...] I did this calculator thing. It did ship — I have one of them.
— Carol Shaw (2011 interview with Vintage Computing magazine)[18]
Data sources: the official Atari manuals and catalogs, Carol Shaw's papers, the Atari Connection magazine, the AtariWiki
| External image | |
|---|---|
| Program structure for the Atari Calculator (excerpt from the papers) |
TheAtari Calculator was not the only RPN calculator for Atari 800, there was also the commercialRPN Calculator (ID numbersAPX-10105 andAPX-20105), written inAtari BASIC by John Crane,[19][20][21] and theAtari Rechner Simulation mit UPN by MTC (imitating hardware RPN calculator).[22][23][24]
In October 2014, Norbert Kehrer created free simulators of theHewlett-PackardRPN calculators (HP-35,HP-45,HP-55 and HP-80) forAtari 800XL and Commodore 64.[25][26]
For the later Atari computers, further scientific calculators were developed, for example, there were twopublic-domain software calculators: theScientific Calculator by M. Weller forAtari ST,[27] and theRPN Calculator by Arnauld Chevallier forIntellivision.[28]
In the late 1980s, Atari produced a line of hardwaredesktop andpocket calculators, but none of them had programming support and an RPN input.[29][30][31]
| External images | |
|---|---|
| Calculator: Computer Program (ROM cartridge label by Oliver Rapp) | |
| Calculator launched on Atari 800 on display during the VCFe 14 (2013) | |
| Atari Calculator (startup screen by Peter Dell for cartridge for Carol Shaw) |
In 2012, theAtari Calculator was highlighted in an article published in theABBUC Magazin (Issue #111), which was published by the German-based, Atari Bit Byter User Club e.V.,[32] and the styledAtari Calculator title was featured on the cover.[33] Cover design and fan art illustrations assisting the article authored by Oliver Rapp.[34][35] Cover illustration also includes a sign in a lower right corner in a form of mathematical formula to say "Thank you", used by Atari community to honor notable contributors:[36]
Rapp also designed a label for the possible futureROM cartridge release of theAtari Calculator, reserving ID numberCXL-4028.[37]
On 27—28 April 2013, theAtari Calculator was displayed at the 14thVintage Computer Festival Europe (VCFe) inMunich, and Vortrag Wassenberg made its presentation. Slides from this presentation were published online.[38]
On 22 November 2013, Peter Dell[39] released a ROM cartridge version of the modified originalAtari Calculator with addingstartup screen, as a personal gift sent to Carol Shaw:[40]
My cartridge was created as a personal gift for Carol. It is explicitly based on the released disk version and includes a complete DOS, so [it] can be used reasonably even you do not have a disk drive (which was the case for her).
— Peter Dell, Calculator,https://forums.atariage.com/topic/351420-calculator/?do=findComment&comment=5257217
In 2013, Norbert Kehrer ported the originalAtari Calculator toCommodore 64.[41][42][43]
On 5 November 2014, theAtari Calculator was highlighted on the 'InverseATASCIIPodcast'. The podcast site also published the source of the example program for theAtari Calculator, newly createdcheat sheet, screenshots of software screen in various modes and an excerpt from the original user manual showing a mistake on instruction illustration.[44][45][46]
On 31 August 2016, Kay Savetz, the host of the 'ANTIC podcast', uploaded at theInternet Archive the scans of theColleen Calculator source printouts, an unreleased cartridge version of theAtari Calculator — obtained from Harry Stewart — which was originally presented by Carol Shaw. In addition, two source printiouts, which included code forfloating-point arithmetic handling, were scanned and uploaded theAtari Calculator cartridge specification, handwritten by Shaw, and the official prited user manual for theAtari Calculator.[47] Savetz uploaded it all with a permission from Shaw, and the original printouts Shaw had donated to and now are storing at theStrong Museum, as well as all of the materials related to Atari, she collected during her employment period at the Atari (1978–1980).[48]
On 29 June 2017, Shaw was hosted by Savetz on the"ANTIC" podcast. During the interview, Shaw described more details about theAtari Calculator and theColleen Calculator development.[49][50][51]
On 4 September 2020, Savetz released onGitHub source files of theColleen Calculator, recovered and reconstructed from scanned printouts.[40][52] The header in source files includes info on the initial commit date by Shaw:
COLLEENCALCULATOR,BYCSHAW.TITLE'COLLEENCALCULATOR,BYCSHAW'0000ASMBL=0;1=>ASSEMBLE THIS SECTION, 0=>THIS STUFF HAS BEEN REMOVED;; ATARI CALCULATOR CARTRIDGE COPYRIGHT 1979; WORK STARTED 2/20/79; PROGRAM STARTED 3/14/79
The name of theColleen Calculator refers to the codename of Atari 800 — the "Colleen".
ATARI CALCULATOR COPYRIGHT 1979 RPN RAD DEC BITS16 FIX9 OFF ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ STACK ┃REG CONTENTS┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃X 2.907┃0 13.450┃ ┃Y 35.┃1 0.┃ ┃2 45.┃2 2.987┃ ┃3 13.456┃3 35.┃ ┃4 2368.7688┃4 3.1416┃ ┃5 3.1416┃5 56.┃ ┃6 120.┃6 0.┃ ┃7 3.3714286┃7 0.┃ ┃8 1637.┃8 0.┃ ┃9 69.┃9 0.┃ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ ENTER MEMORY REGISTER 0-99 3. .35. *** 2.987 STO ENTER MEMORY REGISTER 0-99 2. 2.987 *** >▆
CALCULATOR COPYRIGHT (C) 1979 ATARI ALG RAD DEC BITS16 FIX8 CMPND ENTER ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ STACK ┃ MEMORY ┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃X 0┃0 0┃ ┃Y ┃1 0┃ ┃2 ┃2 0┃ ┃3 ┃3 0┃ ┃4 ┃4 0┃ ┃5 ┃5 0┃ ┃6 ┃6 0┃ ┃7 ┃7 0┃ ┃8 ┃8 0┃ ┃9 ┃9 0┃ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ 0 *** >▆
Кроме того, она сделала калькулятор для Atari 800 - программируемый, с научными и финансовыми функциями. [Also, she created a calculator for Atari 800 - programmed, with scientific and finance functions.]
Carol Shaw's game River Raid (1982) has a perfect match for the full routine, and the source code for her games is held by the Strong museum, meaning that the original source code for HRCALC can be seen; this is, in fact, where we take the name HRCALC from.
Outside of gaming, Shaw programmed a calculator to run on the Atari 800 computer.
Publisher: Atari.
Publisher: APX.
Calculator. With this program, your ATARI Personal Computer becomes a powerful, 145-function programmable calculator.
The ATARI Calculator can turn your ATARI Home Computer into a powerful calculator with 145 functions.
Finished in 1979, sold in 1982 on disk officially with DOS II, while developed for DOS I. So be careful with MEM.SAV...
Use with console keyboard.
Eintrag in der Atariwiki zumAtari Calculator auf dem VCFe.
The Carol Shaw papers are a compilation of game design documentation, notes, sketches, source code printouts, advertisements, and other ephemera relating to the career of video game designer Carol Shaw.
This interview took place on June 29, 2017.
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