Re: 35s -- I know this is "piling on", but . . . Message #3 Posted by Paul Brogger on 28 Aug 2007, 1:50 p.m., in response to message #2 by Dave Johnson
I've been leaning to the left for a long time, now.
;-)
AND, it just now occurs to me what great "wisdom" there was in the 33s' keyboard design. (It would sure be hard to detect any misalignment on that thing!)
Which reminds me of Henry Petroski's observation (in, I think, his book "Small things considered: why there is no perfect design") on the design of a glass tumbler, into the thick base of which a rather large bubble had been deliberately introduced. (You've probably at some point seen and held an example of this style of drinking glass.) The bubble's purpose: to distract the eye from what otherwise would be glaring imperfections in each tumbler's realization.
So, what do you do to a calculator to distract the eye from otherwise glaring defects ("acceptable variances") in manufacture? I'll bet the highly regular layout of the 35s (and virtually every other H-P model) is much harder to consistently produce without noticeable variation than is a design with deliberately-introduced curves or angles.
Edited: 28 Aug 2007, 2:22 p.m.
|