Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


                   Looking Back across Thirty Years of PCalc

   Adam Engst

   From PCalc developer James Thomson on the calculator's 30th
   anniversary:

     I was looking for a small project to learn how to program my new Mac
     properly, and I remembered the graphics I'd done for the control
     panel, and thought that they would work well for a calculator as
     well. Take note of 'a small project just to do X', this will be
     referred to many times during this story.

     The built-in Mac OS calculator of the day was a very simple affair,
     and so I decided I would write a calculator that could do binary and
     hex, to help me with my programming. And so the idea for PCalc was
     born.

   Who would have expected that a calculator app would thrive for 30
   years, evolving through multiple Mac chip architectures and Apple
   operating systems and gaining easter eggs, in-app games, and spin-offs
   along the way? [1]Read on for all that, PCalc's connection to Douglas
   Adams of [2]The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and more great
   stories.

   [3]Read original article

References

   1. https://pcalc.com/mac/thirty.html
   2. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
   3. https://pcalc.com/mac/thirty.html

.