[time-nuts] Re: HP5360A

[Tom Van Baak]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for that video link. I did not remember that the interpolator was 
in its own oven. The early 5360A used nixie tubes, later models used a 
plasma display (Panaplex). More info the 5360A here:

"Introducing the Computing Counter", p 2
"An Electronic Counter for the 1970's", p 9
"Computation for Measurement Complexity", p 13
https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1969-05.pdf
http://hparchive.com/Journals/HPJ-1969-05.pdf

"Computing-Counter Measurement Systems", p 2
"Programmer is Key to Computing-Counters", p 7
https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1970-12.pdf
http://hparchive.com/Journals/HPJ-1970-12.pdf

"First of the New Breed"
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/publications/measure/pdf/1969_06.pdf

"hp Application Note 116: Precision Frequency Measurements"
https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/an/pdf/an_116.pdf

Some previous discussions:

https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2016-April/097227.html (tvb)
https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2016-April/097229.html (jra)
https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2016-April/097232.html (paul)
https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2016-April/097233.html (jeremy) ...

A nice set of photos here:

https://dopecc.net/calculators/hp/5360a/
https://dopecc.net/calculators/hp/5360a/photo/

----

The hp 5360A is special to a number of us. It was one of the first 
examples of a calculator or computer built by hp, complete with external 
keyboard, display, memory, and stack-based programming language. As a 
result it could compute clock statistics, including Allan deviation, and 
this was 50+ years ago! The documents listed above have rich history and 
are still good reading if you have an interest in frequency counters, 
computers, stability analysis.

Notice that the title of the youtube video is "HP 5360A Computing 
Counter Repair or Making my Computing Pig Fly Again" and the cartoon 
used is a pig with wings. I'm not sure what the youtube author intended, 
but the 5360A actually did "fly". In spite of being large, noisy, and 
heavy, it was also "portable" and robust. Joe Hafele and Richard Keating 
famously used a 5360A computing counter during their 1971 
round-the-world flying clock relativity experiment with 4x 5061A cesium 
clocks. Spot the 5360 in the 1st and 3rd and last image at:

http://leapsecond.com/museum/HK50/

More info on the 1971/1972 Hafele-Keating experiment here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment

That inspired my time dilation experiments. Here's one using 53132A 
counters and 6x 5071A cesium clocks:

http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/2016a-DSCN8572v.jpg
http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/photos.htm
http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/

/tvb


On 11/20/2022 10:48 PM, Jeremy Nichols via time-nuts wrote:
> Internally known as “the computing pig” because of its weight.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:40 PM Adrian Godwin via time-nuts <
> time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:
>
>> A deep dive into an HP5360A computing counter. I didn't realise HP were
>> making interpolating counters this early.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0uL8wiJ-YI
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list --time-nuts at lists.febo.com
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