{"id":5841,"date":"2014-03-27T13:13:48","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T17:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=5841"},"modified":"2014-03-27T13:13:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T17:13:48","slug":"in-memoriam-palmer-hanson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=5841","title":{"rendered":"In Memoriam: Palmer Hanson"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was less than 24 hours ago that I wrote about the death of a friend<\/a> and now I have to do it again: I just learned that Palmer Hanson died a few days ago, after a prolonged illness.<\/p>\n

Palmer’s name was well known to the calculator enthusiast community ever since the days of the friendly rivalry between owners of high-end Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard calculators in the late 1970s. Palmer was famous, among other things, for writing one of the fastest calendar printing programs for the TI-59 calculator. Though I never met Palmer in person, over the past decade and a half I corresponded with him many times, on account of my Web site dedicated to programmable calculators<\/a>, rskey.org<\/a>, and the archival material that I publish there.<\/p>\n

It was only a few weeks ago that I received an unexpected parcel from Palmer, with a batch of rare newsletters that he sent to me for scanning and Web publication. I gladly complied<\/a>. Another batch of newsletters followed shortly thereafter; this batch is still sitting on my desk, as I’ve been busy with work lately and have not had the time to do the scanning.<\/p>\n

Therefore, I knew that Palmer was gravely ill, but I was nonetheless hoping that he would stay with us for a little while longer. Unfortunately, when our time comes there is not much we can do, and Palmer’s time came after a long and, I sincerely hope, happy life.<\/p>\n

Googling his name just now, I came across a video of a presentation he gave less than two years ago, at HHC2012:<\/p>\n