[time-nuts] HP Reliability

Jeremy Nichols jn6wfo at gmail.com
Sun Feb 14 20:31:08 EST 2016


Up to roughly the mid-1970s, even ordinary mortals, HP employees, could 
fly first class if you were traveling on company business for HP and the 
flight was longer than 3 hours. Even I, an lowly process engineer, 
included in a shopping trip "back east" to Boston and Philly, got to fly 
first class. HP sent five employees on this shopping trip—God only knows 
what it cost. That was then, when HP had more cash than it knew what to 
do with.

J.

On 2/14/2016 4:48 PM, Wes (N7WS) wrote:
> I was never with HP but I bought (using Hughes Aircraft and US 
> government money) megabucks worth of HP Instruments.  The whole 
> facility bought millions more.  The local Tucson HP sales office had a 
> salesman assigned just to Hughes. They showered us with catalogs, app 
> notes, training programs, seminars and I even traveled a few times to 
> attend programs elsewhere.  We paid for our own airfare and hotel, but 
> breakfasts, lunches, dinners, girly shows, etc were on HP.  In 
> discussing travel expense reporting with the rep, unlike Hughes where 
> every penny had to be accounted for, he said his reporting consisted 
> of counting the money in his wallet when he left and counting it again 
> when he got back.  The difference was his expense.
>
> Wes  N7WS
>
>
> On 2/14/2016 4:05 PM, Jeremy Nichols wrote:
>> I was with HP 1972-79, when it was still a great company. The 
>> vertical integration was such that there was a joke about HP plant 
>> site landscaping, which always seemed to feature ferns. The reply was 
>> , "We're making our own coal!" We not only had packaging engineers 
>> but made our own cabinets. We made our own integrated circuits; I 
>> made the photomasks for those ICs in the Santa Clara Division (02, 
>> the old Frequency&Time Division) in building 51-Lower, next to the 
>> line where the counters were wired. Good times, free coffee.
>>
>> Jeremy
>> N6WFO
>>
>
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