[time-nuts] HP Cesium Standards in the International Atomic Time Scale, the legend of Felix Lazarus, and the "top cover

[jimlux]

On 12/23/18 4:20 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote:

> With 20:20 hindsight, I can speculate about the fact that
> the SRD was made by the HP Semiconductor division and
> was in a non standard package.  We now know that this
> would have been a huge time bomb when the day came that
> we couldn't get this diode any more; which surely would
> have happened long before now.  Of course who knew that
> the 5071 would still be in production 30 years after
> this decision was made?
>

and the "market lifetime" of parts today is much shorter.  There are 
lots of parts from Hittite that were essentially "run on this line 
only", and when they moved geometries, they're never to be seen again.

5 years is a good run these days.