TI-30

The TI-30 is a series of scientific calculators manufactured by Texas Instruments, the first of which was introduced in 1976. While the original TI-30 left production in 1983 after several design revisions, TI maintains the TI-30 designation as a branding for its low and mid-range scientific calculators.

Price

The original TI-30 was notable for its very low cost for the time, around US$25. This was much less than the retail prices of other scientific calculators of the era; for example, Hewlett-Packard's cheapest scientific at the time was still well over US$100. It sold for less than the cost of a professional grade slide rule, which became rapidly obsolete. The low-priced TI-30 made scientific calculators far more available than before, for example to the typical high-school student. The TI-30 may be the best-selling calculator ever, with an estimated 15 million manufactured during its lifespan from 1976–1983.

It is rumored that the original TI-30 got its name from a planned retail price of US$29.95 or US$30. Even if true, however, the MSRP was $24.95 at introduction, and all current models in the line are less than US$20 as of December 2007.

Description

The original TI-30, essentially a cheaper version of TI's earlier SR-40 unit, had an LED display, was powered by a 9 volt battery, and contained nearly all of its functionality in one chip, where previous calculators had many discrete parts. It could do just about all the log and trig functions of an HP-35, its primary competition at the time. Although the SR-52 pioneered algebraic notation with precedence and parentheses back in 1975, the TI-30 made that approach available to consumers at a much cheaper price point.

In 1980, TI converted the TI-30 to use an LCD, releasing the TI-30LCD in Europe and the TI-30 II a year later in the U.S. The calculator itself remained functionally similar over several redesigns in the following few years, with solar power coming to the line in 1982 in a joint venture with Toshiba. The X in all current TI-30 models refers to the addition of a 10+2 display (that is, a 10 digit mantissa plus a 2-digit exponent) in 1993; with the addition of a 2-line display and a D-pad in the XIIS/XIIB in 1999, the TI-30 line split in 2, with the TI-30Xa becoming TI's overall entry-level scientific, and the enhanced XII designs offering more input flexibility to the user. The MultiView models, introduced in 2006 and 2007, replace the 2-line display with a dot matrix display similar to a graphing calculator, and move many of the functions traditionally placed on or next to individual calculator keys off onto menus very similar to those used on the popular TI-83 calculator line.

At one time or another, most models in the line since the introduction of the LCD models have been available in both solar powered and battery versions; the Xa retains solar power only on models sold in a few markets in Europe, while the XIIS and XS MultiView models run off both solar and battery power depending on available ambient light. The earliest model, however, ran off of a 9 volt battery, and was said to drain the battery quite quickly, creating a market in aftermarket rechargeable battery upgrades.

A custom version of the TI-30Xa made for use in Virginia middle-schools made news in 2004; the fraction features were disabled leaving the two fraction keys blank, but one student found a workaround, causing Texas Instruments to release a patched version in 2005.

TI-30 models

"This listing is incomplete, for more details, please see the references"
*TI-30 LCD (1980) — the first LCD version
*TI-30II (1982) — slimline format with the TI-30 key layout
*TI-30III (1984)
*TI-30 Solar+(1987) — powered on only solar energy
*TI-30 Stat (1988)
*TI-30 Galaxy — part of a line of landscape-aspect calculators from the mid-80s
*TI-30X (1993) — the X signifies an expanded 10 digit display (from the original 8).
*TI-30Xa (1994) — added the constant key to the TI-30X
*TI-30Xa (rev 1996) — Introduced a more modern, smoothed design. Currently the bottom of the TI-30 line, the Xa has a standard one-line, 10+2 digit display. The solar-powered eco RS model is available only in Europe.
*TI-30XII (1999) — added a two-line, scrollable display and a D-pad for navigating previous results
*TI-30XIIS (2003) and TI-30XIIB (2004)— solar/battery or battery powered, updated versions of the TI-30XII
*TI-30XS and TI-30XB MultiView (2007) — first non-graphing TI calculators with a dot-matrix display; able to display expressions in textbook-style notation. Uses a command syntax similar to TI-BASIC, but with no programming capability.

References

[http://www.datamath.org/Story/TI-30_Birthday.htm Datamath Calculator Museum: TI-30, 25th anniversay]

[http://www.friedemann-seebass.de/almetr_e.html#ti30_g Photo-realistic TI-30 Emulator]