Old HP Artifacts and etc .

 From time to time, folk go in and clear out their garage or basement, and find 'treasures' from the past.  Papers, equipment, old advertisements, a journal, whatever.  And strange as it may seem, some of this is incredibly important from a historical standpoint.   Two cases in point at the Computer History Museum are the Pelkey interviews and the Jay Last Fairchild papers.

1. The Pelkey interviews.  These were 81 audio interviews done with leading network designers and other key people during the 1986-1988 period, later compiled into an ACM book, Circuits, Packets, and Protocols: Entrepreneurs and Computer Communications, 1968-1988 by James L. Pelkey, Andrew L. Russell, Loring G. Robbins Morgan & Claypool, Apr 19, 2022 - Computers - 632 pages.    There is a back story here, where the Computer History Museum initially eschewed these as 'anecdotal history' but later realized that this trove is uniquely valuable, and the collection was established thirty years after the fact.  Pelkey as of 1988 didn't yet acknowledge Cisco (great back-story), which of course a dozen years later had produced more than half of the Internet routers of the world.   Jim assed away in 2023, months after the ACM book was published.  https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2023/02/10148825/1NVeRg1pnl6

2. Two key efforts enabled capture of the Fairchild semiconductor papers fifty years after the fact.  Jay Last, one of the 'traitorous eight'. was very historically minded, and he journaled heavily, plus purloined and saved  key papers about Fairchild when he left the company before the founders then started Intel.  In addition, he marshaled a collection of Jean Hoerni's papers and journals, that helped serve the later donation by Texas Instruments of old documents that they had accumulated through acquisitions of National Semiconductor (https://computerhistory.org/press-releases/fairchild-release/).   Truly historic material, that had gone unnoticed for five decades, this invaluable material has fueled several books and significant historical research in the meantime.

I wrote a small monograph a decade ago for the Computer History Museum Board of Trustees (a group I was privileged to be a Trustee for nearly three decades), entitled 'Preserving Our Digital Revolution Heritage: If not you, who?  If not now, when?:  (https://www.lulu.com/shop/charles-house/digital-revolution-heritage/paperback/product-12jqr4qz.html?page=1&pageSize=4).  It argues for the notion that many of us can participate or contribute to this cornucopia of arcane computer history, and if we fail to do so, that many salient stories will never  be captured for posterity.  How to do so is the question.  For HP lovers (the old HP?), thee is a great mechanism, which is herein described.

In that vein, this month, Bill Dyck (37 year HP veteran) sent a note out, saying to  Hewlett Packard Employees - past and present (cf. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2450210642/?multi_permalinks=10174461959035643)

Bill Dyck ·rsodopnSte5h45fu 4rlgf2ua811 bfF9ut1m762r7g1ycgm68i90 e:g aMA ·

Cleaning up storage and came across a collection of old HP computers. 100LX, 200LX, Jornada 820, Omnibook 500. Any idea if these are interesting from a historical perspective? All of them are working!

Curt Gowen responded, with something maybe others could use:

Curt Gowan

HP and HPE have jointly hired HeritageWerks, a public relations agency, to store equipment and documents in an archival warehouse -- plus digitize and display the HP photo archives on a website. Many early photos. Includes DEC and Compaq items. https://www.hewlettpackardhistory.com

Only a few of many objects and documents in the collection are displayed on the website. Products featured at the top level of the website tend to be unusual ones; dig deeper into the site for coverage of the more successful and long-lived products. The site is designed to emphasize social consciousness, quality of worklife, and technical innovation. https://www.hewlettpackardhistory.com/about-the-archives

To send a comment or propose the donation of documents or objects: www.hewlettpackardhistory.com/contact As with any archival organization, if your offer is accepted you will be sent an agreement to sign.

The Bilzer Report

 Wow, questions pop up all the time from "the old days"

Scott Futryk, my partner at AstroVirtual  (https://www.astrovirtual.com/), posed the following today:On Jan 28, 2026, at 6:21 PM, Scott Futryk <Scott@anywhereanytime.us> wrote:

    1. How often was the Bilzer Report "run?

    2. Who was responsible and what was the source data?

    3. Who got to see it

    4, When did the executive staff see it?

    5. How many times per quarter, per month did the Bilzer Report get analyzed?

    6. On a scale of 1 to 100, what was the OVERALL VALUE of the Bilzer Report ?

    7, Was anything ever written about the Bilzer Report good or bad ?

Thx,

 

Scott

 

Co-Founder & Managing Director

AstroVirtual Inc.

www.AstroVirtual.com 

Silicon Valley, CA  95020

408-569-5900

 

On Jan 28, 2026, at 7:55 PM, charles house <housec1839@gmail.com> wrote:

1.  Monthly

2. Maria Bilzer, Carl Cittrell.  Daily order data from every HP office

3. All GMs, all CORP OFFICERS

4. Third day of the next month

5. I have no idea

6. 90

7. Don’t know.  I’m sending 3 pp from the book that Ray Price and I did some years ago

So, you, dear reader, are probably wondering just what was the Bilzer Report, and what difference does it make today?

I pulled a paragraph out of The HP Phenomenon (House and Price, Stanford Press, 2009) to answer: 

 

AstroVirtual built a Dashboard for the 1978-1985 timeframe for the Instrument Group data.  If you persuade me hard, I could insert some learning from it.

As usual, there are cartoons for practically anything.  Here's one for today's political turmoil

The corollary is that there are a ton of great ideas that have been tried before, and found to work extremely well, that have been forgotten in the meantime.   Such is the Bilzer report!

Bill Terry RIP

 Two weeks ago, I posted that Bill Terry had passed away.   The San Jose Mercury-News just published his obituary this morning, at https://www.mercurynews.com/obituaries/william-terry-palo-alto-ca/

Obituaries are often sources of surprise for readers who thought they knew the person.  A note about Bill in that obit was a big surprise to friends of mine, but Bill and I had talked about this more than once.  "Bill found joy in simple pleasures as well. He was an avid stamp collector who appreciated history through philately."

What?   Why would Bill and I talk about that?   Well, long story short--I'd been sickly as a youngster, missing nearly 100 days of school in 3rd and 4th grades.  And if you miss a lot of school, how do you learn important things like history?  Well, stamp collecting is indeed a historian's delight.  Not only does the US honor all sorts of historic figures and events with stamps, most other countries do as well.  So for the avid collector, stamp collectding is a terrific hobby by which to learn facts that honor that country's heritage.   Moreover, it is an easy hobby, easy enough to do when bed-ridden or wheelchair-bound, Franklin Roosevelt, wheelchair-bound for his entire presidecny, was an avid philatelist, so was I, and so was Bill.  Bill's knowledge was so thorough through such means that he would routinely surprise if not stun engineers at HP with his broad collection of factoids, gathered from who knows where (at least as they viewed it).

The other thing noteworthy about Bill that the obit covered nicely was his dedication to Santa Clara University, somewhat unique within HP executive circles which was preponderantly Stanford oriented.  I taught both places, and have had extended family graduate from each (not to mention Berkeley or Caltech).   Most HP engineers were dismissive of the Santa Clara and San Jose State programs, but we surely got some great engineers from those places, and over the years, they've proven their worth.  The key thing for Santa Clara U for me, and for Bill, was their dedication to the ethical and moral worth of the pursuits.   In particular, two men--Jim Koch and Geoffrey Bowker-were key for years.  

Jim served as the Dean of the Leavey School of Business in 1990 to 1996.  He also was on the Informix Board of Directors, which is where I first got to know him.  He was the founding director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society (now the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship), which examines the intersection of technology and organizational change.

Geoffrey and his accomplished wife, Susan Leigh Star, were the founding STS leaders for SCU for Koch's department, a department that Bill Terry supported with great enthusiasm.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_C._Bowker.     

One never knows in advance how one person's life--their actions, their values, and their support--will play out in your own life.  What's the phrase--"never burn a bridge"?   I wasn't happy (duh, really?) when Bill Terry tried to scotch my XYZ display back in 1966, but later I had to agree that he did allow it to continue even though he could have stopped it.   But when he was in Cupertino, he graciously invited our Logic team to work with his engineers (in particular, Bert Forbes, who took us to IBM Santa Theresa and the rest became history).   And then he was very supportive of the HP Corporate Engineering role.  But more than that, long after we'd both left HP, he was supportive of both the UC Santa Barbara Center for Information impact on Technology and Science (CITS), and later of MediaX at Stanford.

I could go on and on, but I shall not do so here.   Just raise a cup tonight to this great man, Bill Terry.

Madder than a wet hen

 Where did all of these idiomatic phrases come from?   How many do you remember?  And apologies for the phallic ones, which were especially popular with my step-father

Happiness:

    1. Happy as a clam in a mudbank

    2. Happy as a pig in shit

Unhappy:

    1. Madder than a wet hen

    2. Mad enough to spit nails

    3. Mad as a March hare

Capability:

    1. Can't carry a tune in a basket

    2. Couldn't pour piss out of a boot

    3. Dumb as a box of rocks

    4. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer

    5. Not playing with a full deck

Busy:

    1. Busier than a one-armed paperhanger

    2. Busier than a cat covering up shit

Memory:

    1. She can remember things that never even happened

    2. Slip one's trolley

Candor:

    1. Lying through one's teeth

    2. We're using alternative facts

    3. (Vulgar) Couldn't say "Shit" if they had a mouthful

If these are your 'thing" chances are you grew up in.a rural environment, maybe even in the South--boy, is that pejorative or what?

Why do I bring this up?

Well, Jenny is MADDER THAN A WET HEN about our HP printers.   This is (gasp) blasphemous.  She and I both bleed blue, we met at HP, we each worshipped HP, and we have always venerated their goals, not to metntion their products.   Until now.  She swears, with enthusiasm, I'LL NEVEER BUY ANOTHER HP PRINTER after the series of insults with our current pair.

Start with the fact that if you once signed up for the Automatic Ink Delivery, nothing ever works again.  Yes, you get the ink, and a healthy charge.  No, you cannot buy ink at Costco or Best Buy or Staples and installit yourself.  The machine denies the cartridge even though it is an HP cartridge.  and the work-around to get it to accept the cartridge takes thirty minutes, and HP wants $35 to talk to an 'helpful' person.  And the machines forget how to do dual-sided printing at their discretion, and forget how to let you scan on occasion (usually only when you urgently need it), and . . . we could go on forever, but . . . .

This stuff all used to work beautifully, reliably, faithfully, and was the best thing since sliced bread.  And, it isn't like we aren't good ink customers.  Each of us print about 5,000 pages per years--that's known as a 'Ream box", meaning ten reams of paper.  That's a lot.   I know, I know, not a very wise thing to do for the environment, but . . . .    And that's a lot of ink.   And we've done something like this for more than 30 years each. 

MAD AS A WET HEN

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 Stanford's Biz School 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 John 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.'    Talk about endearing himself to Young!

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.   They all went to work for Noel Eldred, HP's first Marketing VP, and he gave each of them key roles as the company developed a sales force and immense skills.

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 'no 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 instrumentation, electronic, medical and analytic.  And just incidentally, my direct boss in Corporation Engineering when Doyle was moved 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 not only Terry but Young and Morton, plus Carlson and Cottrell who both ran the early computer group beforeTerry did.    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.

Dean Morton

 Dean Morton, one of the kindest, smartest HP managers ever.   Never mind the quarrelsome editorial that Wired posted in the nineties, pronouncing Morton and Young as the downfall of HP (no one yet knew the names of Carly Fiorina, Mark Thug (or Hurd or Turd, depending on who did the pronunciation), and Leo Apothekar {who?} or the semi-nameless individuals since).   

Dean was, for my taste, the perfect blend of Hewlett's personable-ness and Packard's strategic insights.  He didn't have Dave's 'go for the jugular' or Bill's inventive acumen, but he could listen, and reason.  And, he had a deceptively quiet manner of getting things done.

https://obituaries.paloaltoonline.com/obituaries/memorials/dean-o-morton?o=8889

Au Revoir, early days at HP

 I missed the obituary for Dean Morton, clearly a 'passing of the guard last spring.   Sue Chance, Doug's beautiful wife, passed away a few weeks ago, victim of a sudden stroke.   She was a great friend of Portola Valley children, including mine when I lived there some years ago.   Our paths had not crossed in recent years, but the last time I saw her, that radiant smile was still captivating.  Doug has been a blessed man for their long marriage.

Small factoids that pop up when you see something that jogs the mind.    Back in 'the day' an English lad named John Doyle came to America, and after being nurtured by Nancy Young's father in Omaha.  Doyle moved to the Bay Area, first getting a job cleaning outside windows on the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco.   Gawd, can you imagine?   Having been a Royal Air Force pilot during WWII, he said it didn't give him much fear.   Soon, though, he got a job at HP Palo Alto (that was the only locale for HP at the time),  and he moved into a small Sunnyvale apartment where he met Doug and Sue.  Sue said, "there's this girl in our apartment, you might want to meet."   Turned out to be Judy, and soon enough, she became Judy Doyle, for the rest of her life.  (truth in advertising, Nancy Young and I were married during our Portola Valley time, where we first met Sue and Doug).

Okay, long preamble.  The point of this post is to lead up to the obituary of Dean Morton, which I had not heard of prior to searching the Palo Alto "Lasting Memories" pages while looking up Sue's obituary.  

First, a disclaimer.  I don't as a rule read all of the obit pages, but in doing so today, I found Jerry Carlson, one of the first hapless folk to try running initial parts of what became the HP Computer Group.  Packard had taken Bob Grimm out of running the Automated Measurements division (AMD) just before he left for Washignton D.C in February 1969.   He brought in Jerry Carlson, and then when Hewlett became President of HP (Dave never agan ran HP, and at the time, HP computing was $10M, a whopping 4% of the company).   Tom Perkins pissed Hewlett off big-time, and Bill brought Carl Cottrell out from Eastern Sales to be the Computer Czar over Perkins at Dymec and Carlson at AMD.  Disaster all the way around.

Another year, and Perkins, Cottrell, and Carlson were all gone from HP.  Bill Terry, who was the Division Manager for HP Colorado Springs (my boss) was pulled in to run the Computer Group, which gave me a great entree to pilot some early Logic Analyzer ideas in Cupertino.  Terry lasted a little longer, but then Packard and John Young helped Hewlett decide to have Paul Ely report to Bill Terry, which Paul found unworkable and soon enough took over.  Soon after that, Hewlett retired, and John Young became CEO.  John soon brought an old colleague back to Palo Alto from Boston--Dean Morton.   I'll say more about Dean in the next post.

I find it ironic in a way that Cottrell, Carlson,  Morton, and Young all have died this year.  And other 'giants' -- Al Bagley, Don Hammond, and John Doyle all were recent also.  Bill Terry and Paul Ely are still with us--the group is dwindling, and those of us left are a bit long in the tooth.  Ah, well.  Au revoir!