[time-nuts] Long life products, obsolete components, and code 4 parts. RE: HP Cesium Standards in the International Atomic Time Scale, the legend of Felix Lazarus, and the "top cover

[Richard (Rick) Karlquist]

On 12/28/2018 8:36 PM, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote:

> Well, I can’t prove that Bob would lose this bet (Maybe Rick K could), and I didn’t work on the 5071.  But for PFS products, in production engineering, we had been building and selling these instruments for decades, with no end in sight.   Volumes were low, so they didn’t get redesigned very often.   I’ll bet the same six pack that the 5071 team felt it would be a VERY long time before HP designed a replacement for the 5071.
> 
> Rick – any memories you can share?
> 
> Happy New Year,
> 
> Hugh Rice
> 

Even in the late 1980's when the 5071A project started,
the handwriting was on the wall with respect to GPS.
It seemed like cesium was going to be a niche product.
OTOH, Len's vision was that after the 5071A we would
do an optically pumped version.  So it could be said
that no one expected the 5071A to last 25 years.  What
changed was:

1.  Len never got permission to do an optically pumped
version.  The people at Microchip tell me that even now,
they can't get reliable laser diodes.  Optical pumping
is limited to laboratory standards, not COTS ones.

2.  I am shocked! to report that GPS can be spoofed or
jammed :-).  Now every military commander wants his own
cesium.

An anecdote about life time buys:

When I designed the 5071A, HP had their own SAW fab.
This was when HP made their own coax, transformers, etc.
They already had a 640 MHz SAWR that was used in the
11729, so I designed it into the 5071A and phase locked
it to the 10811.  Then we got the news about the SAW fab.
The managers patted themselves on the back for arranging
with SAWTEK to support the SAW products.  However, that
referred to SAWTEK selling us only complete oscillators
for $300.  Not loose resonators.  BTW, Jack Kusters
developed the original SAW technology.

So I started work on a new RF module without a SAW, and
meanwhile purchasing made a life time buy.  Long before
the inventory was used up, I released a new RF module
that was one PC board that replaced the old on with two
PC boards and had a factory cost that was $100 lower.
The production engineers loved the module because it
just worked from the get go.  It contained five cascaded
doublers that went from 10 MHz to 320 MHz.  Previous
multiplier chains going from 10 MHz to 90 MHz constituted
a full employment program for production engineers.  With
the 5071A design, I never heard from production about any
problems.

I assumed that they would immediately implement this change
because they were basically shipping a $100 bill with
each instrument.  But they said, no, they would have to
write off the life time buy inventory and "lose" money.
I tried to explain "sunk cost" to them to no avail.  So
they kept shipping the old design until the last SAWR
was used up.  Go figure.

Robin Gifford of 5071A fame used to talk about his professor
who had a very old tank of helium that was acquired when helium
was very expensive.  It was carried on the books at its
"book" price which was the historical cost.  The professor
would order new helium tanks to avoid using up the "expensive"
helium.  Robin loved debunking nonsense.  He had a subtle
but devastating English sense of humor.

Rick