Bill Terry, HP and MBAs

 I got waylaid a few weeks ago, promising to add more commentary re Dean Morton.   I drafted a short note, and just found it in the 'draft' file, so I just sent it on.   The reason, though, that I was in this Blog was that I just learned, from Bill Parzybok, that Bill Terry passed away last Sunday, not long after I noted that he and Paul Ely were the only two of the C-staff left that took over from Dave and Bill in the '70s.  Gawd, IN THE LATE '70s?   That was nearly fifty years ago, whew.

And believe me, it Dave and Bill could see their company now, they'd be fully whirling in their graves, enough to power all the Nvidia AI centers in California.

Bill Terry was one of the cavalry that joined HP in 1958.  He had an MBA from Santa Clara University, while Morton and Hal Edmondson were from Harvard.  John Young's MBA was from Stanford, and Packard put Dean Ernie Arbuckle on HP's Board.  

Hewlett eschewed MBA's, maybe not as vociferously as did Al Bagley, but Packard thought maybe HP would profit to have a couple of them.   As one story goes, in 1964 (might have the year wrong by a year or two), the Counter division (Bagley's, later known as the Santa Clara Division) had the highest revenue and profit percentage for HP, ahead of the perennial winner, Microwave headed by Young.  Bagley was able to commandeer the corporate-wide PA system and announce the year-end results (since Dave and Bill were out of town), and he cackled while noting that 'his division "won" honors, WITHOUT THE HELP of one goddamn MBA.'   

As it turned out, though, the company found all of these fledgling MBAs the same year, and the hiring group was unable to select amongst them.  Packard said, "If they're that good, hire all of them."  Which HP did, and they indeed came through.

Terry's obituary has yet to appear in print, and I'll post it along with more story as it is publsihed.

For now, I'll just note that Bill's first division assignment was to become the HP Colorado Springs marketing manager in 1965, as we were competing (and losing badly) against Tektronix.  He was the voice who told Packard that my XYZ display (the world's first commerical computer graphics display had 'npo market, only 31 possible sales.'    We of course sparred, and in his later autobiography, he claimed that the number was 50, and that he personally DID support it!   And we became great friends.

His leadership did cause Tektronix troubles, and that earned him a shot to run all of HP computing, at which he struggled, but he did introduce the HP35A, along with some wonderful jokes.  While there, he encouraged my logic analyzer work, which helped immensely for our projects.

Later, he became titular head of all of HP insturmentation, electronic, medical and analytic.  And just incidentally, my direct boss in Corporation Engineering when Doyle move to Cupertino with computers.

Bill, in my life, was as big and as important as anyone in my life.  God speed, Bill

It is remarkable to me that all of these giants are disappearing 'together'.      Doyle preceded them by a year, but 2025 includes Carlson, Cottrell, and Terry who along with Doyle ran the entire computer group for awhiel, while Morton and Young became COO and CEO along the way.    Ely left HP in 1984 or so, and Young, Morton, and Terry were the kingpins from then until 1992.  Gone within month of each other.  Kinda like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, dying 50 years to the day of July 4, 1776.