Re: How do you decipher HP serial numbers for date.
|
IIRC, the story is in "Bill and Dave" a great book about HP. The A was a mistake in pricing, Bill & Dave guessed at the price (like $67 or so) and found they couldnt make any money at that price. Disney came along and because they wanted "changes" it became a "special", the B model, and H&P upped the price to cover their collective butt (like $78.00)....There may not have been many A models sold.....
Really god book, if you dont have it in your library, pick up a copy. You will like it!
73
Jeff Kruth
?
In a message dated 9/1/2022 11:45:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, n8zmTWH@... writes:
?
Hi Tom¡Never heard that part of it before. So who bought the first A models?
?
?
From: [email protected] < [email protected]> On Behalf Of Tom Lee Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2022 11:41 PM To: [email protected]Subject: Re: [HP-Agilent-Keysight-equipment] How do you decipher HP serial numbers for date.
?
And that was in addition to calling it the model 200, with an "A" suffix to boot. Dave Packard was very, very smart.
The model that Disney ended up buying was the 200B, by the way. The 200A was a 35Hz-35kHz unit. Disney wanted that shifted downward, to 20Hz-20kHz. Bill Hewlett made some fast tweaks, and the 200B was shipped off to a happy Disney.
--Cheers,
Tom
--
Prof. Thomas H. Lee
Allen Ctr., Rm. 205
350 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4070
The story goes that the first HP product was the 200A audio generator. The serial numbers started at 1000 so that their first customer, Disney, wouldn¡¯t think it was the first product they¡¯d ever built and sold. Disney bought 7 of them to use to calibrate the sound for the movie Fantasia.
?
Tom, N8ZM
?
?
Trivia: Serial numbers of the form ¡°09mmXnnnnn¡± can also appear as ¡°9mm-nnnnn.¡± Such instruments would have been made in (late, usually) 1969, when the change in format was underway. I suspect this was a practical matter: serial number tags would have been ordered in quantity and in advance of production. Production management, if several hundred of the old serial tags were in stock, would lean towards using up the old ones before bearing the expense of ordering new ones.?
?
On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 10:17 AM Mikek <amdx@...> wrote:
I have two meters both older I know because of the AC plug.
?HP 3400A # 806-08346
HP 400E # 0949A11285
??? Thanks, Mikek
PS, I knew I saw a thread about this, I checked several groups I frequent and couldn't find it.
?
????????????
--
?
|
