Collector's Items

Last week, Red Baron read in the Badische Zeitung about a collector's item. The Ritter firm, known for its square Sport chocolate bars, had produced a limited edition called Einhorn (unicorn). The article went viral, so now on eBay collectors pay more than 100 euros for a bar and more than 10 euros for an empty package.

Actually, the article in the BZ was more about the history of the unicorn, a mythic animal that fascinated my grandson when he was young. Still, as my son-in-law smugly remarked, I should have told him about the licorne in French.

Let's continue with collector's items instead. In my last blog, I mentioned two: the Madison flag and Fox & Friends (not the TV show but the craft beer).

My American friends told me that the present flag would soon be outdated. Its central drawing, representing the Madison Capitol on the isthmus between the two lakes, somewhat resembles a Native American sun symbol and therefore must be replaced, Mayor Paul Soglin said. So I'd better talk to Freiburg's city officials about taking down the Madison flag on the Kaiserbrücke and keeping it in a safe place.

The other item is the craft beer, Fox & Friends, brewed in only 400 bottles for the occasion of the Partnerschaftsmarkt. Red Baron bought 1.5 % of them, drank one with Elisabeth, and hid five in his cellar for particular and future use. In the meantime, one of the American visitors took home an empty bottle, a collector's item q.e.d.

But there is more.

Red Baron still owns an HP-35. This was Hewlett-Packard's and the world's first scientific pocket calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions. The HP-35 used Reverse Polish Notation in a stroke of genius* and was sold in 1972 for U$ 395, at that time a small fortune that CERN paid.
*RPN always means one keystroke less than the classical notation

The HP-35 meant a significant breakthrough in radiation protection. When calculating Curies into Becquerels, we used slide rules, but getting the order of magnitude right was another story, e.g., 1 μCi = 37 kBq.

The NiCd battery pack is long gone, but you can operate the HP-35 and its red-light diodes on AC power or buy new, expensive NiMH battery packs online.

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