 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Windows Calculator" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Windows Calculator | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Calculator inWindows 11 | |
| Original authors | Chris Peters, Mark Cliggett, Marc Taylor, Kraig Brockschmidt[1] |
| Developer | Microsoft |
| Initial release | 20 November 1985; 40 years ago (1985-11-20) |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | github |
| Written in | C++,C# |
| Operating system | All versions ofMicrosoft Windows,Xbox system software,[citation needed]Windows 10 Mobile,Windows Phone |
| Platform | IA-32,x86-64,ARMv7-A, andARMv8-A (and historicallyDEC Alpha,Itanium,MIPS, andPowerPC) |
| Type | Software calculator |
| License | Proprietary Software (Windows 1.0 -Windows 8.1) MIT License (Windows 10) |
| Website | aka |
Windows Calculator is asoftware calculator developed byMicrosoft and included inWindows. In itsWindows 10 incarnation it has four modes: standard, scientific, programmer, and a graphing mode. The standard mode includes a number pad and buttons for performing arithmetic operations. The scientific mode takes this a step further and adds exponents and trigonometric functions, and programmer mode allows the user to perform operations related tocomputer programming. In 2020, a graphing mode was added to the Calculator, allowing users to graph equations on a coordinate plane.[3]
The Windows Calculator is one of a few applications that have been bundled in all versions of Windows, starting withWindows 1.0. Since then, the calculator has been upgraded with various capabilities.
In addition, the calculator has also been included withWindows Phone[4] andXbox One.[citation needed] The Microsoft Store page proclaimsHoloLens support as of February 2024, but the Calculator app is not installed on HoloLens by default.
A simple arithmetic calculator was first included withWindows 1.0.[5]
InWindows 3.0, a scientific mode was added, which includedexponents androots,logarithms,factorial-based functions,trigonometry (supportsradian,degree andgradians angles), base conversions (2, 8, 10, 16), logic operations,statistical functions such as single variable statistics and linear regression.
UntilWindows 95, it uses anIEEE 754-1985double-precision floating-point, and the highest representable number by the calculator is 21024, which is slightly above 10308 (≈1.80 × 10308).
InWindows 98 and later, it uses anarbitrary-precision arithmetic library, replacing the standardIEEEfloating point library.[6] It offersbignum precision for basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and 32 digits of precision for advanced operations (square root,transcendental functions). The largest value that can be represented on the Windows Calculator is currently<1010,000 and the smallest is10−9,999. (Also! calculates thegamma function which is defined over all real numbers, only excluding the negative integers).
InWindows 2000,digit grouping is added. Degree and base settings are added to menu bar.
The calculators ofWindows XP andVista were able to calculate using numbers beyond 1010000, but calculating with these numbers (e.g. 10^2^2^2^2^2^2^2...) does increasingly slow down the calculator and make it unresponsive until the calculation has been completed.
Unlike later versions, calculating withbinary/decimal/hexadecimal/octal numbers is included into scientific mode.
InWindows 7, separate programmer, statistics, unit conversion, date calculation, and worksheets modes were added. Tooltips were removed. Furthermore, Calculator's interface was revamped for the first time since its introduction. The base conversion functions were moved to the programmer mode and statistics functions were moved to the statistics mode. Switching between modes does not preserve the current number, clearing it to 0.
The highest number is now limited to 1010000 again.
In every mode except programmer mode, one can see the history of calculations. The app was redesigned to accommodatemulti-touch. Standard mode behaves as a simple checkbook calculator; entering the sequence6 * 4 + 12 / 4 - 4 * 5 gives the answer 25. In scientific mode,order of operations is followed while doing calculations (multiplication and division are done before addition and subtraction), which means6 * 4 + 12 / 4 - 4 * 5 =7.
In programmer mode, inputting a number in decimal has a lower and upper limit, depending on the data type, and must always be an integer. Data type of number in decimal mode is signed n-bit[7] integer when converting from number in hexadecimal, octal, or binary mode.
| Data type | Data type size | Lower limit | Upper limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Byte | 8 bit | −128 | 127 |
| Word | 16 bit | −32,768 | 32,767 |
| Dword | 32 bit | −2,147,483,648 | 2,147,483,647 |
| Qword | 64 bit | −9,223,372,036,854,775,808 | 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 |
On the right side of the main Calculator[clarification needed], one can add a panel with date calculation, unit conversion and worksheets. Worksheets allow one to calculate a result of a chosen field based on the values of other fields. Pre-defined templates include calculating a car's fuel economy (mpg and L/100 km),[8] a vehicle lease, and a mortgage. In pre-beta versions of Windows 7, Calculator also provided a Wages template.
While the traditional Calculator is still included withWindows 8.1, aMetro-style Calculator is also present, featuring a full-screen interface as well as normal, scientific, and conversion modes.[9]
The Calculator innon-LTSC editions ofWindows 10 is aUniversal Windows Platform app. In contrast, Windows 10 LTSC (which does not include universal Windows apps) includes the traditional calculator, but which is now namedwin32calc.exe. Both calculators provide the features of the traditional calculator included with Windows 7 and Windows 8.x, such as unit conversions for volume, length, weight, temperature, energy, area, speed, time, power, data, pressure and angle, and the history list which the user can clear.
Both the universal Windows app and LTSC'swin32calc.exe register themselves with the system as handlers of a 'calculator:' pseudo-protocol. This registration is similar to that performed by any other well-behaved application when it registers itself as a handler for a filetype (e.g..jpg) or protocol (e.g.http:).
All Windows 10 editions (both LTSC and non-LTSC) continue to have acalc.exe, which however is just a stub that launches (via ShellExecute) the handler that is associated with the 'calculator:' pseudo-protocol. As with any other protocol or filetype, when there are multiple handlers to choose from, users are free to choose which handler they prefer— either via the classic control panel ('Default programs' settings) or the immersive UI settings ('Default Apps' settings) or from the command prompt viaOpenWith calculator:.
In the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, a currency converter mode was added to Calculator.[10]
On 6 March 2019, Microsoft released thesource code for Calculator onGitHub under theMIT License.[11]
In Windows 11, the Calculator app's user interface was modified to match the design of Windows 11 and a new settings page is present for users to toggle between the themes of the app without changing the operating system's theme. In 2021, Microsoft announced it would migrate the codebase of the Calculator app toC# in order to welcome more developers to contribute to the app. The community edition of Visual Studio can be easily configured to develop the source code.[12]
By default, Calculator runs in standard mode, which resembles a four-function calculator. More advanced functions are available in scientific mode, includinglogarithms,numerical base conversions, somelogical operators,operator precedence,radian,degree andgradians support as well as simple single-variablestatistical functions. It does not provide support for user-defined functions,complex numbers, storage variables for intermediate results (other than the classic accumulator memory of pocket calculators), automatedpolar-Cartesian coordinates conversion, or support for two-variables statistics.
In addition, the programming mode allows conversions between bases 16, 10, 8, and 2, the most commonly used by programmers. In this mode, the on-screennumeric keypad includes the hexadecimal digits A through F, which are active when "Hex" is selected. In hex mode, only integers are supported.
Calculator supportskeyboard shortcuts; all Calculator features have an associated keyboard shortcut.[13]
Calculator in programmer mode cannot accept or display a number larger than asignedQWORD (16hexadecimal digits/64 bits). The largest number it can handle is therefore 0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (decimal 9,223,372,036,854,775,807). Any calculations in programmer mode which exceed this limit willoverflow, even if those calculations would succeed in other modes. In particular,scientific notation is not available in this mode.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(May 2020) |
sqrt(4) − 2 = −8.1648465955514287168521180122928e−39), would sometimes be calculated incorrectly due tocatastrophic cancelation.[14] In newer versions, this doesn't happen with integers, but it still happens when you enter decimal numbers.[citation needed]Calculator Plus is a separate application forWindows XP andWindows Server 2003 users that adds a 'Conversion' mode over the Windows XP version of the Calculator. The 'Conversion' mode supportsunit conversion andcurrency conversion. Currency exchange rates can be updated using the built-in update feature, which downloads exchange rates from theEuropean Central Bank.[17][18]
| |||||||
| Management tools |
| ||||||
| Apps |
| ||||||
| Shell | |||||||
| Services | |||||||
| File systems | |||||||
| Server |
| ||||||
| Architecture |
| ||||||
| Security | |||||||
| Compatibility | |||||||
| API | |||||||
| Games | |||||||
| Discontinued |
| ||||||
| Spun off to Microsoft Store | |||||||
Calculator | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manual | |||||||||||||
| Logarithm |
| ||||||||||||
| Mechanical |
| ||||||||||||
| Electronic |
| ||||||||||||
| Software | |||||||||||||
| Historical | |||||||||||||
