HP's pygmy divisions and groups

 So, the last post was a bit chatty about Femcor, and 'our roots in McMinnville'.  But in truth, HP McMinnville didn't get a lot of play in HP history.   Mike Malone's 'Bill 'n Dave' book (2007, Portfolio Press, Penguin Books, 438pp.) doesn't mention any of the 'pygmy divisions or groups' (Medical, Analytic, Components), nor does Burgelman, McKinney's, and Meza's 'Becoming Hewlett-Packard' (2017, Oxford Press, 390 pp.).   Ray Price and I covered them moderately well in 'The HP Phenomenon'. (2009, Stanford Press, 638 pp.), but Femcor didn't get singled out.   The books about Carly Fiorina's reign (is that the right word?), both Anders' Perfect Enough and Burrows' Backfire don't mention any of these activities, but in fact the divestiture of the Instrument Groups had just been completed, so why bother?

Might be worth at least 'sizing' these groups, first from, say 1976-1978 and then from 1996-1998, two decades later.   Here's the early data for both revenues and profits by group:

So the earnings profile (using a standard 50% ratio from Operating to Net) was 12.1% for Test and Measurement including Components, and 8.0% for computers and the pair of Analytic and Med.

And here's the later revenue data (HP didn't show the 1998 earnings contributions, but the company earned $2.945 Billion).  Estimates I've heard were T&M still around 12.0% net; Med and Analytic about 8.0% net, and computers about 5.9% net.   Within computers, Peripherals were close to 9.0%, and CPUs and Systems were around 3.0%.    

So those numbers are 'telling'.   In 20 years, the Computer Groups grew from $761 Million to $39.4 Billion, while Medical and Analytic together grew from $261 Million to $2.374 Billion.   Test and Measurement (plus Components) grew from $740 Million to $5.22 Billion.  Growth rates per annum were thus 9.0% compound for T & M;  11.7% for Med and Analytic; and 21.8% (the historic rate for the entire company from 1947-1987) for the computer groups en totale.

Not too hard to figure out why the divestiture, and why most books ignore this 'sidebar' of HP.  On the other hand, there were some wonderful stories and products and 'making a difference for the world' contained within those instrument arenas.

There are 'memoirs' and anthologies about divisions and product groups within HP, again few that I know of with respect to any of the Pygmy divisons and groups.   Loveland and the Voltmeters, and later origins of the Desktop Calculators (really, early PCs), Colorado Springs, Boise Laser Printers, Corvallis handheld calculators, HP Labs in Palo Alto, and the South Queensferry, Scotland Division all have been recorded, some in considerable detail.   And the computer divisions, as a group, make the news for Malone and the Oxford Press book

Here, for example from The HP Phenomenon is the one sentence that mentions that such a group existed: p. 127.  "By 1975, the Medical Group had been fully formed, with two divisions in Massachusetts (Waltham and Andover), one in Germany,  another in Oregon, and an operation in Brazil."

The segment goes on to describe an issue that led to establishing the German Medical Division: "The grup quickly found that medicine had regional and local idiosyncratic methods that needed to be considered in product features as well as sales and marketing."

One might wonder just why authors haven't done more justice to these groups, and I'd commend any readers interested in that question to read our book from pages 126-130 closely.   The three pygmy groups built great products that enhanced HP's reputation amongst scientist and engineers and doctors worldwide--but the revenues and growth rates were swamped out by the more established instrument lines and then by the rampaging computer divisions and fierce competition.

Thus, stories such as the three that follow in the next three posts never made it into 'the books' and in most cases, not even into the lore.  But, now that I've spent a couple of wakeful nights rehashing the events and the take-aways from them, I feel compelled to put them into a written form.  Stay tuned.

FEMCOR

 Well, life sometimes has surprises around the corner.   We attended a small rally the other day at our daughter's home, meeting some neighbors.  We've just moved from SE Portland (near Reed College, Steve Jobs' alma mater), to McMinnville, Oregon, about forty miles SW of where we were.  

McMinnville is somewhat famous these days because the local aviation museum has the fabled Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' plywood 'flying boat' from WW II--essentially the largest plane in the world for a long time.  Its total flying time is something like 26 seconds at 135' off the ground, covering one nautical mile, with Hughes at the controls, and some 35 others on board.   Incidentally, the wood used was mostly Birch, not Spruce.   Maybe it's apocryphal, but employees who built it were said to call the plane the Birch Bitch rather than the Spruce Goose.

So, one neighbor welcomed us warmly, and asked 'where are you from?'    We replied, something like "we've lived lots of places, but we're Californians by birth and most years that's where we've lived."

"Where?" she pressed.   Jenny's laconic reply, "Well, Bay area mostly, but Chuck is Southern Califonria and Jenny Sacramento."

"How do you like living in a small town like McMinnville?" she queried.

And I instantly had a flood of thoughts.   FIRST, I worked in McMinnville for HP forty years ago, when it was 10,000 people instead of 40,000.   That stopped her cold.  She had no idea HP'd ever been here.

Second, Palo Alto was the same size as McMinnville is today, when I went to work for HP, and Cupertino had only 3,400 people when we rented an apartment there, PERIOD.   All cherry orchards.   I skipped telling her that when my younger brother was born in Phoenix, that it was not much larger than McMinnville today, and when I moved as an HP designer to Colorado Springs, it too was not much larger than McMinnville is now.   Yesterday seems SO FAR AWAY.

Moreover, my wife Jenny and I moved from a small (like really small) town in Central California four years ago to Oregon.   We managed a horse ranch and stable for a decade in Elderwood, CA (pop. 158), 23 miles northeast of Visalia, on the last public road affronting both Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.   We were 19 miles (on CA State highway 245, a twisty two-lane road, with signs suggesting that RVs 'skip it') south of another small town, Badger (pop. 140).  Here's a picture of our ranch, with the majestic Kaweha mountain range (think 5 miles from Mt Whitney). and a ranch part way to Badger.  Yes, there are STILL remote parts of California.

To give you an idea, Woodlake on this map, at 7,800 folk--an agricultural town--Jenny and I added 14% to the total of postgraduate degrees in the entire town when we moved to 'suburban' Woodlake in Elderwood.  Backwoods.  Note the other towns nearby -- Seville (pop. 411); Yettm (pop. 108); Lemon Cove (pop. 498); Lind Cove (pop. 236).   Park City, Utah when we moved there before their first Winter Olympics was 2,800 when we first bought there.  So, we had to laugh with this woman who thinks McMinnville is "small".   

But YES, HP did have a plant here in McMinnville.   As we drove yesterday back into Portland, both Jenny and I recalled it (she worked at HP in a different group and saw HP in many ways that I did not, and vice versa).   She knew it only as an HP Division, but I knew it as the company that the Medical Group bought in 1974.  I couldn't remember the name, but came up with initials FMIR as we drove--Field eMissions Infra Red--was what I was imagining.  But on the way home, it hit me--it was FEMCOR which stood for Field EMissions Corporation.   And just outside the airport where the Spruce Goose 'lives' today (a great visit, by the way), I Googled FEMCOR and got nothing.  Then I Googled HP McMinnville and found a squib describing Femcor, started in 1958, and bought by HP in 1974, and then 'moved' somewhere undisclosed in 1997.  The reason for the article was to describe the remediation efforts to clean up a 100 acre tract for later use.   The address was given as SW 1700 Baker Street, which in turns out is still vacant land just east of the Albertson's and Roth markets where we shop today.   And Linfield College owns the ground, and is six blocks west (this is all right on highway 99W going through town), and moreover there is a building (or auditorium) at Linfield named the "HP" building, according to our daughter last night.     https://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/ECSI/ecsidetail.asp?seqnbr=207

So, both Jenny and I have 'older roots' in this particular small town than darn near anyone here.

Go figure.

Geezers at AMW 50

 In another blog recently, I got on a roll about "reflections" -- as in trolling through old memories.  And, honestly, old guys sometimes do this (often around grandchildren, who {truth be told} sit quietly and appear to listen, but if you could monitor their thoughts, they're of the form 'when will the old geezer shut up?').

I just attended the 50th anniversary of the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop (AMW 50), and true to form, they (and me) trotted out a series of old stories and pictures of much younger folk who had hair.  This fun went on for quite a while the first day, while thanking half the audience for 'being new with us' and 'glad to have you'.   This was one of those hybrid events that COVID foisted upon us--and presently in the Chat part of the remote viewers, a message appeared, to the effect of "when are these old geezers going to shut up??'

I'd been thoroughly enjoying the folderol, but I suddenly imaged my grandchildren, and I thought, "These designers are here to talk about what the new Nvidia chips with AI can do, and we're wheezing about what it was like to have a new 8008 from Intel with a bootstrap loader."    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8008

The Intel 8008 had a whopping 3,500 transistors, 50% more than the ground-breaking 4004 from Ted Hoff two years earlier in 1971, running in 'fast mode' at 800 KHz.   The Nvidia RTX (Real-time eXperience) 3070 chip introduced six years ago has 5,888 computer 'cores' onboard, with a clock speed of 1.73 GHz, and as one industry observer said at the time: 

"It is not an exaggeration to say that NVIDIA CUDA technology could well be the most revolutionary thing to happen in computing since the invention of the microprocessor. It's that fast, that inexpensive, and has that much potential."  Less than $500.   CUDA means (Compute Unified Device Architecture) and represents (estimate ~ 500,000 devices EACH)

So the geezers are 'out to lunch' and I had a ball showing off our new ENLIVENZ displays from AstroVirtual, where we run up to 100 Virtual 30 foot diameter screens in Real-time Pixel-streaming mode for 'next-to-nothing' in cost, and full 1080 graphics mode--like $100 per month for viewing and intercting with 100 interactive screens.  See our website https://www.astrovirtual.com/

But for us old geezers, it was fun to see AMW folk again, and reminince--we could have dwelled on the fact that old HP folk started and ran this thing for most of its life, but that'd take us down another rathole.

Update from John Minck

 I asked John re comments on the last two posts, and he graciously replied.

Hi Chuck,

 

I was not aware that you have a blog for your book, that was many years ago.

 

Yes, I suggest a few edits. We are up to 43 HPMemoirs now. You could use two links, one to the index page for the 43 Memoirs. 

https://hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/company/memories_home.htm

 

Then another link to the home page and instruct to click on Timeline on the dashboard, which offers the HP memories plus HP People Stories plus Other HP Writings. All three are employee recalls of old times.

 

John

A few more sources for HP info

 I mentioned John Minck's work in the previous post, but I only touched on a few things

Here is the link to Mark Mislanghe's original work, still being furthered by John, plus Kenneth Kuhn and Glenn Robb.    http://hparchive.com/.    The three are described within the document; their yeoman service on behalf of HP history is outstanding.

That site is rich with materials about many products, periodicals, etc. including the following:

More interesting for many will be the 'memoirs' of many folk, which are sort of 'buried' in the main website.   Here is a link to 37 HP memoirs, plus many HP France memoirs, plus other 'outsiders'

https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/ressources/resrc_contrib_01.htm

And here is the 'main site'

https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/index.htm

For a more complete listing of the memoirs, try this

https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/company/memories_home.htm

A long hiatus--sorry

 I was quite active with this blog for a number of years, and it has garnered many viewers and comments in the fifteen years since I began it.  Nearly 300,000 views, WOW!   Granted, a big chunk of them (nearly 15%) came around the brouhaha with a disgraced and illicit Mark Hurd's denouement as CEO.  Couldn't have happened to a more fitting individual in my view.  (Whew, still vindictive?)

But HP, the "OLD HP", did not disappear just because of  Mark Hurd--it took the combined efforts of several 'leaders' -- e.g. Carly Fiorina, Leo Apotheker, even Meg Whitman-- but especially because of a shift in focus and ethics that seems almost like Greek tragedy.

And, truth be known, I moved on also to other pursuits.

Of late, though, Ive been drawn back through several events.   People, key people, and people who were my idols, have been leaving the scene.  John Doyle, for example, in mid-January this year.  John was perhaps best known for coining the term "Management by Wandering Around" but his influence was long and strong for many facets of "The Old HP".   I'll do an epistle about him directly.

Another is that belated honors, such as awards and citations, are being sought for key contributors.  Chuck Tyler picked up the cudgel for John Vaught, to be nominated for the Inventor's Hall of Fame.   Tyler rounded up sixteen supporting letters, from old-time stalwarts including Bill Terry, Dick Anderson, Byron Anderson (no relation), Dana Seccombe, Ned Barnholt, Jim Hall, Gary Gordon, and Ed Karrer among others.  Fitting, I must say--shoulda happened years ago.  And not just for Vaught--there are so many worthies that contributed to HP's long-term success.  Maybe I could grab some of these stories and give them just a bit more illumination.  

Gary Gordon, just to pick one, got the Barney Oliver award from Agilent (in one of its incarnations), and was subsequently honored with a video interview at the Computer History Museum.  Which is somewhat incongruous, given that CHM has mostly eschewed HP as a pretender in computing (so it goes when most of the early board were DEC and IBM folk, and the newcomers are mostly software folk).

Oops, grouse, grouse, grouse.

And I MUST mention the yeoman work that John Minck has continued, in furthering Mark Mislange's fabulous work after Mark's early demise.  Here's a link to John's own story  https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/john_minck/inside_hp_00.htm.  

And here's a link to the sizable collection he has curated for a decade now: https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/memories.cgi

If that doesn't keep you busy for awhile, I'd be surprised

Don't hold your breath on me doing another post.  After all, this is three years since the last one.

Chuck

HP, Apple, and thoughts

 So, here's a sample of what's wrong with American Education

Gurman works for Bloomberg; the San Jose Mercury-News just ran the story.   But the SJ Merc added the headline, which is demonstrably stupid and wrong.   Graduate of a local Bay Area school?

Moving past that faux pas, I was in a conversation with noted MIT researcher Charles Leiserson this week, and we were discussing his role in the CM-5, the first supercomputer to ever head the Famous Fifty list, cited in the last post re Rattner's key machines of the 1996 era.   The CM-5 debuted in 1992, architected by Danny Hillis and Leiserson.   It was the computer used for the movie Jurassic Park, even though the book cited Seymour Cray's X-MP.

Here is a Web quote re the CM-5

The surprise for me was when Leiserson held up his i-Phone 10, and said "this little baby outperforms that CM-5 in every dimension except size, weight, and cost.   The first CM-5 cost $45 million, he averred, but the performance metrics of the $1,000 iPhone 10 exceed the CM-5 'significantly.  WOW!

And I woke up this morning thinking about the combinatorics here:

1. The HP 35 handheld calculator was the "first mobile computer" of consequence, thanks to Hewlett

2. Wozniak worked for HP (and handhelds) and we struggled to see that this PC idea was valuable

3. My Logic State Analyzer team built the tools for HP Computer design, but also provided 50 of our top-end HP 1610As to Danny Hillis for the CM-1.   It was our largest order to date, in 1978. $500K.

4. Rattner (an old HP guy) worked with Hillis and the CM-5, in designing the RED machine for NSF .

5. And now HP, with notable attempts and little success, in mobile computing platforms (e.g phones) is about to deliver a competitive supercomputer for $40 million, shades of the CM-5 in its day

And that reminded me of an Intel friend, Nathan Zeldes, who visited our horse ranch last year, and met my sister-in-law, who asked "what did you do at Intel?"   He pulled out an iPhone, and said "ever seen one of these?"   She was, like, "duh, of course" to which he said, "I helped design the first Intel chips for these things, and this computer in my hand has more compute power than the nation of Israel when I went to work for Intel.   And now, with 900 million of these marvels in the world, we use them to argue with strangers and show pictures of cats."

This, some assert, is amazing progress