THE NUMBERS KEEP ADDING UP

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Matthew Rothman bought an HP 12c financial calculator for his first job out of college in 1989.
Years later, he still has the same calculator. And he still uses it constantly, just like thousands of other 12c enthusiasts.
"Whenever I switch jobs, I just peel the old business card that is on the back and tape my newest one on," says Mr. Rothman, head of quantitative equity strategies at Barclays Capital in New York.
Sales of the device, which debuted in 1981, haven't slipped even after its manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard Co., introduced more-advanced devices or even, two years ago, a 12c iPhone application, which replicates all the calculator's functions, the company says. (click below to read more)

"Once you learned it on the 12c, there was no need to change," says David Carter, chief investment officer of New York wealth-management firm Lenox Advisors, who has owned his 12c for 22 years and still keeps it on his desk. "It's not like the math was changing."
Thirty years after the launch of the 12c, it's still commonplace for financial analysts filing into a conference room to set down their calculators next to their papers and cellphones.
Indeed, the 12c, which costs $70 on H-P's website, is H-P's best-selling calculator of all time, though the company won't reveal how many units it has sold over the years. (A standard calculator costs about $10.) Its chief competitor is Texas Instruments' $28 BA II Plus, which is the only other calculator test-takers are permitted to use on the official CFA exam.
The 12c is slim, black and gold, and rectangular, just over five inches wide by three inches high. It runs on an unconventional operating system called "Reverse Polish Notation," which eschews parentheses and equal signs in an effort to run long calculations more efficiently.
That may be one reason users are reluctant to switch. "I've become so addicted to it that I am unable to use the iPhone calculator correctly," says John Lynch, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management Group in Charlotte, N.C.
The system tends to render the calculator mystifying to the novice user. Senior portfolio managers, who use it to calculate bond yields, rates of return and present value, among other things, say they enjoy watching their younger colleagues struggle to master its quirks.
"One benefit is that when I leave it on a conference table here at our offices, none of the young analysts know how to use it," says Christopher Wolf, co-chief investment officer at Preservation Trust Advisors LLC, a mutual-fund firm in San Francisco, who bought his 12c in the early 1980s. "It's like an early fingerprint-recognition system."
New arrivals quickly learn that ignorance of the 12c can flash more warning signs than a scuffed pair of shoes.
"The guy with the totally beat-up HP 12c—you know he's actually done things in business," says James Granberry, a student at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management. "And then there's the young guy who looks like he may have put on his suit for the first time—with a graphing calculator."
Mr. Granberry, who runs a Facebook page dedicated to the HP 12c, made a point to take along his seven-year-old 12c to a meeting with a potential investor—even though he could perform all the calculations using his iPhone's HP 12c app.
One early draw of the 12c was the longevity of its batteries. In the 30 years since he bought his first HP 12c, says James Meyer, chief investment officer at Tower Bridge Advisors, an asset manager in West Conshohocken, Pa., he has changed its batteries only twice. (The original had three watch batteries; newer units use one CR2032 lithium coin-shaped battery.)
To test the 12c's durability, engineers practiced dropping it onto concrete floors, says Dennis Harms, who led the original 12c design team and still works at H-P. "I've heard stories of them surviving snowblowers," he says.
Almost as fierce as the widespread devotion to the 12c is a stubborn resistance to any changes in the way it looks or functions. Users have even objected to changes that made the calculator faster, says Richard Nelson, a retired engineer who now edits HP Solve, the company's official calculator newsletter.
H-P's only major facelift of the calculator was the 2003 launch of the pricier 12c Platinum, which has more memory and additional functions.
Skeptics say the HP 12c's followers are stubbornly clinging to a relic of an earlier era. "The financial calculator is headed the way of the wristwatch: a no-longer necessary device that users carry because of sentimentality, vanity or an unwillingness to change," says Bernie McSherry, senior vice president of Cuttone & Co., a brokerage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. McSherry prefers to use online programs.
Still, many can't imagine work, or life, without it.
Keith Goddard, president of Capital Advisors, a Tulsa, Okla.-based money management firm, brought his 12c to Bermuda's Elbow Beach along on his honeymoon in 1993.
"You never know when you're going to want to check some numbers," says Mr. Goddard, who still rarely travels without one of his two 12c calculators. "I figured by then we were married, so she couldn't do anything about it if I revealed finally that I was a dork."