[time-nuts] HP Stories: Frequency Counter business

vilgotch at bigpond.net.au vilgotch at bigpond.net.au
Mon Jan 21 21:22:48 UTC 2019


Hi all,

That would be a 524B counter, all 90 tubes (depending on the plugin) and 600
watts of it. I still have one in going condition but it's not to be used in
the Australian summer with 42C forecast for later  this week.

The ovenised 100 KHz vacuum mounted crystal in it still performs pretty well
for its age but of course is not in the same class as later instruments in
my lab that are locked to a GPSDO.

I first saw one as an EE student in the late 1960s when it was the ultimate
in frequency measurement technology. The police used to bring their
pneumatic tube electromechanical speed detectors into the university to have
them calibrated against it. 

Cheers,

Morris


From: Neville Michie <namichie at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Frequency Counter business
	decline, Modulation Domain Analyzers, geeks as models

Hi,
I used an HP counter in 1961 that had these vertical strings of neon tubes
behind numbers, and the two least significant decimals were read off two
milliamp meters numbered 0 to 10. For each count the needles would point to
the number to be read. The whole instrument was a 2 foot cube that sat on a
trolley.
After all this time I can not remember the model number. Our company
repaired Air force instruments and recalibration of frequency ?meters?
(calibrated heterodyne oscillators).
Cheers,
Neville Michie

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