HP instrument divisions had a number of serial number formats over the years:
One format was of the form:? YYWWCNNNNN
Where:
YY = an indication of the year when the product was introduced or a?major change was made to the product.? YY = the number of years?since 1960.? Thus YY = 23 indicates the year 1983.
WW = the week of the year when the product was introduced or a major?change was made to the product; range of WW = 01-52.
C = The country in which the product was manufactured.? The letter?"A" indicates the USA as the country of manufacture, "J" for Japan, etc...
NNNNN = A unique number for each individual product within a product?model.? This was typically a sequential number beginning with?00101. Serial numbers <= 100 were usually pilot/proto instruments that? were for internal HP use/testing/development and not usually available to the outside world.
The format of product serial numbers changed in the early 1990s (somewhere around 1993).?Note that on many instrument models, the serial number format was not changed until there was a major change in the model itself, or its manufacture location.
NEWEST FORMAT
The newest format is of the form:? CCYYWWNNNN
Where:
CC = The ISO code for the country in which the product was?manufactured.? The letters "US" indicates the USA as the?country of manufacture. Others include MY for Malaysia, SG for Singapore, JP for Japan, or GB for Great Britain.?
YY = an indication of the year when the product was introduced or a?major change was made to the product.? YY = the number of years?since 1960.? Thus YY = 36 indicates the year 1996.
WW = the week of the year when the product was introduced or a major?change was made to the product; range of WW = 01-52.? Use of?these two characters to indicate week of the year is optional.?Note that for some products, the two WW characters are not?used to indicate the week of the year, but are used as part of?a six character NNNNNN sequence number.
NNNN = A unique number for each individual product within a product?model. This sequence number begins with 101.? For some products, the sequence number has six characters (NNNNNN)
The computer/calculator side of HP have their own serial number format variations...
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