France Rode

France Rode (November 20, 1934 in Nožice, Slovenia) is an engineer and inventor best known for his work on the HP-35 pocket calculator. He was one of the four lead engineers at Hewlett-Packard assigned to this project.

Rode also invented and created the first workable RFID products: workplace entry cards, for which he holds several patents.

France was born in Nožice, Slovenia on November 20, 1934 to farmers father Jože and mother Pepca, born Prešeren, as the oldest of four children. His younger sister Agata and brothers Marko and Aleš completed the family. France started elementary school education in nearby Homec soon after the German occupation of Slovenia during the Second World War. A few months into the first school year the local partisans burned the school building and the children were “saved” from formal schooling for the duration of the war. After the war, until the school in Homec was rebuilt, France’s class was meeting in the local church rectory or in a “Gasthouse” in the mornings and reported for “volunteer” work at the school construction site in the afternoon. Due to an accelerated learning program, France completed the fourth grade in Homec in 1947 and in the fall of the same year began attending high school in Kamnik. He skipped the fifth grade by studying and passing exams designed for the fifth grade during the summer months.

His academic interests at that time were in mathematics, physics and natural sciences. Whenever he had to study, France was excused from farm work. However, living on the farm allowed him no time for extracurricular activities for which he envied his schoolmates. Only occasionally he managed to join his peers after school. His fondest memories of such activities include participating in the staging of Hamlet, directed by Ciril Gostič, brother of operas singer Joze Gostic, France’s Godfather. His nostalgic memories also include skiing trips to Mala Planina and staying with his ski buddies in “Steletova koča.”

Living on the farm did have some side benefits. France learned hard work habits and discovered his inventive drive. In his uncle’s carpentry shop next door, he built his own toys and later tools that were otherwise too expensive to buy. He made the slide rule he used during all his academic years in Ljubljana.

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