[time-nuts] HP Stories: Cesium Standards on Subs and Sperry

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

While HP wasn't a direct defense contractor, we did sell a lot of test 
equipment to defense contractors.The big American submarines had a Cesium 
Standard or two as part of their instrumentation systems.I know little 
about the application, but heard it was part of the communication and/or 
navigation systems.Maybe some of you have experience with this, and can add 
to the story.

None the less, Sperry corporation was a sub-contractor into the greater DOD 
eco-system, and integrated the 5061A into some larger system they sold to the 
submarine builders.Sperry was a "real" defense contractor, and had to live 
by all the DOD rules.There were a number of defense contractors in Silicon 
Valley, with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company being perhaps the largest 
employer in the area.   Both my father, and my wife's father were engineers at 
LSMC for their careers.   We used to joke at my High School that "everyone's 
dad worked for Lockheed."Thus, DOD companies were not a foreign concept to 
me.   But they way the DOD procurement process worked was very unlike how HP 
worked and interfaced with our commercial customers.

Sperry wanted to turn HP into defense supplier when they purchased 5061A's from 
us.   First, they had their special "Sperry Blue" paint job.   Our sheet metal 
and paint shops had to custom build the cosmetic parts for Sperry in a lovely 
baby blue color.Next, they wanted to make sure what was purchased was 
exactly what was specified.  EXACTLY.   The technique to enforce this was to 
document and inspect everything.A special Sperry material list was created, 
with every resistor, screw and wire listed.   HP part numbers, approved 
suppliers, and supplier part numbers, for everything.   It turns out there are 
a lot of components in a 5061A. Sperry would then insist that HP segregate 
all the components that were going into their sacred 5061As, and have our 
incoming quality department inspect every single tiny part, to ensure it was 
the correct component, coming from proper suppliers.   The attention to detail 
was both impressive and maddening.This was way outside our normal 
manufacturing processes, and a huge hassle.

The representatives from Sperry were from a different planet than HP people.
This part of Sperry had it's headquarters in the NYC area, and the lead 
representative was like a movie character from a God Father movie.   Short, 
plump, arrogant, Italian, in charge.  He was THE MAN, and expected to be 
treated as such.  He was cordial on the surface, but was unmovable when trying 
to negotiate what we though would be a sensible compromise of some kind. To 
him, change, any change, was bad.Because if anything ever happened, for the 
rest of human history, that could be traced back to a change he allowed, he 
would be held accountable.He wanted to be held accountable for buying 8  
Cesium Standards, not for adding risk to that purchase.He had a young 
assistant to grind through all the details.   This guy was about 30, and knew 
his role in the game.   There were procurement rules his company must follow, 
and his job was to make sure every detail got done.  EVERY DETAIL.He 
brought exactly zero judgment or critical thinking to the process.

Mr. Mafia man told a story about why not changing things was so important.  As 
I recall, Sperry made some kind of targeting system for artillery, probably 
dating back to WWII, and a vendor had upgraded the insulation on some wiring 
from a fabric weave to more modern extruded plastic insulation.For some 
reason this led to a failure.  (Likely heat related).   This was used as 
indisputable proof that even the most innocent looking changes can cause a 
problem, problems are the enemy, and change was it's root cause.

And then HP invented the 5061B, and changed a bunch of stuff from the 5061A.   
Sperry had a contract that required another batch of HP Cesium Standards, and  
wanted nothing to do with the 5061B.   They had made several previous purchases 
of 5061As, and their overall system had not changed, and they didn't want the 
Cesium Standard to Change either.Since I was the 5061B guy, and young and 
expendable and ignorant (never had worked with Sperry before), I was assigned 
the task of getting Sperry happy with the 5061B.I remember Jeanie Young, an 
energetic women from our marketing department being the lead contact with 
Sperry on business stuff (fuss with contracts, and be responsible for the 
wine-and-dine aspects), as I did the "engineering".

I think our basic position is that not only we don't make the 5061A any more, 
we COULD NOT make a 5061A.   Either take the 5061B, or nothing.   While the 
5061B wasn't exactly the 5061A, nothing else available in the world was even 
close.   They were stuck with us and the hated 5061B and all its changes.
One of the even more annoying aspects of the 5061B is that we had gone thorough 
many of the systems, 

Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: An architectural view of the HP 5060/5061 and awkward oscillator adjustments.

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Several people have asked about the Len Cutler ban on Aluminum Electrolytic 
Capacitors in HP Frequency Standards.   Rick Karlquist could shed more light on 
this too.   The legend of the ban was passed along to me, perhaps by Lou 
Mueller, who liked to tell stories of the old days.   In 1985, we were not 
taking the ban literally.   For example, the 2400uF main power supply filter 
capacitor was AL-Electrolytic, as were a few other smaller capacitors on the 
power regulator.   I sidestepped the capacitor issues on my simple battery 
charger by not having a filter cap after the transformer/full-wave-bridge, and 
just used 120 Hz pulses, since the battery didn't care about DC vs. pulsed DC.  
 (I thought it was pretty clever to leave out the main filter cap.) Where 
possible, Tantalum capacitors were used.For the few places where AL caps 
were used, they were heavily de-rated, operating at 50% of rated voltage for 
example.

As one reader pointed out, back in the 1965 when the 5060A was developed, 
AL-Electrolytic caps were likely a lot less reliable than in 1985 when I worked 
on the 5061B.


From: time-nuts  On Behalf Of Rice, Hugh (IPH 
Writing Systems)
Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2019 8:49 PM
To: time-nuts@lists.febo.com
Subject: [time-nuts] HP Stories: An architectural view of the HP 5060/5061 and 
awkward oscillator adjustments.

Hello Time-Nuts,

 Stuff deleted .


It was fantastically reliable. Only linear power circuits, with robust heat 
sinking of all power devices. The legendary Len Cutler ban on aluminum 
electrolytic capacitors. 5060s were still in use in 1985, after 20 years of 
constant operation. Likewise, 5061As were abundant in time standards for 25+ 
years until they were replaced by the 5071A in the 1990s.

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Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of HP

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Luca wrote:

> There is a little strangeness: the wave clipper darlington transistor Q1 is
> marked as 1854-0611, equivalent to the standard darlington 2N6055. But why
> there is a simple 2N3055 in the picture? Some sort of version update fail?

One other reader (Ian) pointed out this same discrepancy, and there clearly is 
a part number error somewhere.I remember using the Darlington device on 
purpose, because with its higher gain, it took a less base current to 
accomplish the wave clipper job I used it for.

As you can see, getting these details right in documentation is challenging.  I 
remember working on it pretty hard, and this one got past me.   Who knows, for 
the photo shoot of the PCA, I may have just stuck the wrong part in there 
because I didn’t have the right one on had that day.  “Hey, no one will notice 
that the stamping on the transistor doesn’t match the parts list.   I’ll bet no 
one will look at this schematic carefully anyway.   Take the picture.”Never 
knowing that 30 years later, some “time-nut” would scrutinize the photo vs. the 
schematic, and point out to me “those numbers don’t match!”

Putting things in writing and disclosing it to the public is a risky 
undertaking!   

Best wishes,
Hugh




From: time-nuts  On Behalf Of Luca
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2019 8:55 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 

Subject: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of 
HP

Thanks Hugh for the story, and thanks for the schematic!
Quite interesting.
There is a little strangeness: the wave clipper darlington transistor Q1 is
marked as 1854-0611, equivalent to the standard darlington 2N6055. But why
there is a simple 2N3055 in the picture? Some sort of version update fail?
Thanks
Cheers
Luca
iw2lje

Il giorno sabato 9 febbraio 2019, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) <
hugh.r...@hp.com<mailto:hugh.r...@hp.com>> ha scritto:


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Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of HP

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

In reading back over my sarcastic description of the 5061A battery charger, I 
was pretty hard on the unnamed designer of that circuit.   I did find a 
schematic of an older generation batter charger for the 5061A, and it had the 
same basic implementation.

As far as I know, the circuit, in all it’s complexity, was reliable, and 
causing no field problems.   This really is the most important aspect.   For 
low volume products, another $5 of component cost, on an instrument that sells 
for $20,000+, isn’t material.

A guess on what happened, to cut this dude some slack:  As all of you know, the 
most important aspect of any design is the original definition, or objective 
for the circuit.Many times, the circuit designer is not the “architect” of 
the system, and is just implementing what they are told to do.   Maybe the lead 
system designer wanted a fast recovery circuit for the batter charger, because 
marketing wanted to push the feature about how the system would be back to full 
capacity quickly.Who knows?

While the implementation had some excessively complicated details, the bigger 
issue was the requirement for a fast/slow charge, which I felt was unnecessary. 
   This first designer may not have had the freedom to make that decision.

While working on the circuit, I first started developing my now very strong 
bias towards “elegant simplicity” in my designs, that I have carried forward to 
this day.  I’m sure I got a lot of encouragement from some of the older HP 
engineers to think this way.I hate complexity that doesn’t add value.  I 
don’t find it cool or exciting, just a waste.I am not a good engineer on 
programs that want to bling out a system with lots of fluff.

Somewhere over the years I picked up this line:   “A good engineer is a lazy 
engineer.  They are always looking for the easiest way to do things.” The 
designer of the 5061A battery charger was definitely not a lazy engineer.

Cheers,

Hugh Rice

_
From: Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)
Sent: Saturday, February 9, 2019 10:31 PM
To: 'time-nuts@lists.febo.com' 
Cc: 'hug...@yahoo.com' 
Subject: HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of HP


I grew up on Silicon Valley (Santa Clara Valley, California), graduating from 
High School in 1980.   My home town is Cupertino, also the home of Apple 
Computer.During my formative teen years in the 1970s, HP was THE company in 
the valley, the elder statesmen of Hi-Tech.   (Apple was just a small upstart 
business for computer geeks, and their headquarters were just down Bubb Road 
from my HS.)   The reputation of HP as a great company was untouchable.   Both 
in the quality of the products, and as a the best place to work. Being from 
Silicon Valley, I choose to study electrical engineering (rather than my 
natural inclination towards mechanical engineering, having done a lot of work 
on cars and bicycles), hoping to come back to the area to work when I 
graduated.I had fantasies of working for HP in my college summers as a 
“SEED” student, but was never able to make the right connections.A HP job 
upon graduation with a BSEE was like winning the lottery, especially for a 
Silicon Valley Kid.

Home for Christmas during my senior year, I was visiting a friend from church, 
and her dad (Charles Adams) asked me how my job search was going, and if I had 
considered working for HP.   “I’d LOVE to work for HP.  I just can’t crack in 
and get an interview.”He said they had an opening for a new grad EE, and 
asked if I would be interested in considering it.   “Uh, yes!”   A few days 
later, I was in the Precision Frequency Sources Production Engineering area, 
doing the all day rounds of a classic HP interview.   I did well enough that 
they offered me a job the next day, and I went back to school for my final 
semester with a HP job in hand.   A certifiable miracle.It didn’t get any 
better than this.

I asked Charles what I could do to prepare for the job, and he mailed me a 
5061A Operating and Service Manual to review.   It was incomprehensible.   But 
I could tell that the 5061A was something pretty special, because all the 
circuit diagrams and theory of operation descriptions had things in them that 
even the grad students I knew couldn’t understand.   And I had a job at HP!   
Working on Atomic Clocks!(Whatever they were.)

As you know from past postings, my job was part of the 5061A to 5061B 
development team.  The first task I was assigned to was to freshen up A2 
Battery Charger Assembly.   The purpose of this circuit was to keep the 20 cell 
NiCad backup battery ready to supply power in emergencies.   The must fix issue 
was a gigantic mica capacitor used in a RC timing circuit, which was both 
expensive and unprocurable.I think my mentor, Roberto, encouraged me to 
look over the whole circuit, and sift out all the other old parts that would a 
problem in the near future.   (All

Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of HP

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Hi Poul - 
I'm only familiar with the system design for the 5061A/B, and can't really 
speak to a general HP T design approach.  Maybe Rick has some insights.   
My real expertise is HP Inkjet printers, but those stories are for another 
mailing list.

Reaching back to the 5060A, I think Lou Mueller once told me that Len Cutler, 
in the original system design, decreed that every module would have "10dB of 
margin".Not sure what that was compared to, but the idea is that he wanted 
a very reliable, very high margin design.   

The AC transformer in the 5061A/B was from HPs transformer organization (HP 
actually made their own transformers for many years), and whoever designed the 
original power system left a lot of "brown out" margin in the system.There 
is a "115/230"  switch on the primary side of the transformer, but the system 
was designed to work well in low voltage 100 VAC countries.The input AC 
voltage could go down quite a lot before the main 18.7V power throughout the 
5061A/B would start to wilt.  

Hugh  



-Original Message-
From: Poul-Henning Kamp  
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2019 1:02 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 
; Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) 
Cc: 'hug...@yahoo.com' 
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization 
of HP

Hugh,

I notice your design, like all other HP designs I have seen from that era, 
operates with a very high margin for low mains voltage.

Do you happen to remember what HP's design criteria were for this ?

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp   | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer   | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of HP

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

The 5061A/B is the only HP T product that I worked on deeply, and yes, the 
manual is very complete and accurate, save a typo here or there.One careful 
reader (Ian) pointed out a typo in the generic 2N part number for the main TO-3 
power transistor!

The product family was old enough that the service manual was effectively the 
master copy of the schematics, for both internal HP use and external use.   I 
have no memory of any official schematics stored or archived  anywhere else.   
That may just be my bad memory though.  I'm sure I drew up schematics for my 
own designs, but don't remember "checking them in", or making official copies 
of them.

Official parts list, or bill of materials, were of course computerized by the 
1980s, and drove the MRP (materials resource planning) process for purchasing 
components for manufacturing.

Hugh



From: time-nuts  On Behalf Of Adrian Godwin
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2019 3:57 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization 
of HP

The schematics are so good - easy to read, lots of context. Even some
off-board parts shown so you can see where the signal ends up. Notes about
the function and adjustment. You can learn a lot from them. Manuals were
worth having.

So many of today's schematics are little more than a netlist : a bunch of
fragmented sections with no way to find how they link up (maybe net names
but you can't tell if they have 2 ends or several). Useless even for
troubleshooting, let alone education.


On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 6:08 PM Poul-Henning Kamp 
mailto:p...@phk.freebsd.dk>> wrote:

> Hugh,
>
> I notice your design, like all other HP designs I have seen from
> that era, operates with a very high margin for low mains voltage.
>
> Do you happen to remember what HP's design criteria were for this ?
>
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
>
> ___
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> time-nuts@lists.febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to
> http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com
> and follow the instructions there.
>
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[time-nuts] HP Stories: The life and times of the 5060A/5061A Harmonic Generators. In memory of Vic Olson.

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

A quick intro for those who haven't seen past "HP Stories":  I work for Hewlett 
Packard, and my first job at HP in 1984 was working on the HP 5061B Cesium Beam 
Frequency Standard.   I was part of the two man team that did the 5061A to 
5061B development, and then I was the "production engineer" on the 5061B for a 
few years. I have been writing a series of stories from the old days for 
the entertainment of the time-nuts mailing list.



The 5061A "A4 Harmonic Generator", at first glance, appears to be an odd 
mechanical device attached to the top of the Cesium Beam Tube in the 5061A.   I 
have faint memories of technicians using it as a carrying handle for the CBT, 
when removing it from the instrument. But it has that suspicious shape of a 
microwave wave guide, where it attaches to the CBT, that tips off trained eyes 
that this is much more than an oddly shaped carrying handle.

As my knowledge of the 5061B system grew (under the tutelage of Chuck Little, 
Lou Mueller and Robert Montesi), the Harmonic Generator innocence transformed 
into an intimidating presence.A quick read of the theory of operation from 
the service manual seems simple enough.

"The phase modulated 5MHz signal is multiplied by 18 in the A3 Multiplier, and 
then multiplied by 102 in the A4 Harmonic Generator Assembly."   No big deal.   
Easy math. "Just" multiply the 5MHz signal a couple times.

But later in the details of the Harmonic Generator:
"The A4 Harmonic Generator generates a microwave signal of 9192.63... MHz 
(phase-modulated microwave by 137 Hz) to be applied to the cesium beam tube.  
A4 receives a phase-modulated 90 MHz signal from the A3 Multiplier and a 
12.63... MHz signal from the A1 Synthesizer.  Step-recover diode CR2 is the 
heart of the harmonic generator.  The conductivity of the p-n junction diode 
during reverse recovery is nearly a step function.  The transition from reverse 
conduction to cutoff occurs in about 0.1 nanoseconds.  This produces high-order 
harmonics with greater efficiency than conventional non-linear harmonic 
generators." It continues on for three more paragraphs in more obscure RF 
circuit nomenclature detail.

The old guys, when talking about the harmonic generator and frightening me 
about the black magic it contained, often concluded with:  "But it works really 
well, so just don't touch it."

Rick Karlquist in a recent posting talked about the RF design work he did on 
the 5071A, replacing the A2 Synthesizer, A3 Multiplier, and A4 Harmonic 
generator with modern (1990) techniques to generate the 9,192,631,772.5 magic 
Cesium frequency, without the use of wave-guides and step recovery diodes.   
Rick mentioned the Korean visiting professor who invented the A4 in about 1964. 
  Lou Mueller once told me a story about this same professor (who I will call 
Professor K), when he was working at HP back then:

Professor K had an elaborate microwave test bench, full of wave guides, 
attenuators, tuning circuits and RF instrumentation that he used in development 
of the A4.  One day someone thought it would be fun to play a joke on him, and 
put a honey-bee inside the wave guide in his test setup.   Professor K returns 
from lunch, and starts noticing anomalies in his measurements.   He carefully 
measures and calculates, scratching his head to figure out what was wrong.   
After a bit of analysis, he finally unbolts on section of the wave guide, which 
according to his calculations was the problem.  And sure enough, that was were 
the bee was. Looking back, the A4 was an brilliant design.  It was in 
production from 1965 to 1990, 25 years, essentially untouched and working 
flawlessly the whole time.

As you can see from the attached picture, there are a number of adjustments 
that can be made to the A4, which leads to Vic Olsen.Vic was in his early 
60's when I met him, and the epitome of a curmudgeonly old school tech.A 
bit course around the edges, wore the same sloppy jeans and simple plaid shirt 
to work every day, but knew how to do his job, and begrudgingly endured 
ignorant young engineers like me.   Vic was one of the two technicians that 
worked on the 5061A in production, and was the one who did the adjustments on 
the A4 as it was assembled into a complete instrument.   I have faint memories 
of the ancient test setup he used to "tune" the A4 before attaching it to the 
CBT.   There was some sort of oscilloscope like instrument with a small round 
CRT, with a few wave guide like things.   I'm sure they all dated back to the 
original 5060A setup from 1965.   Vic would fiddle with all the adjustments on 
the A4 for a few minutes, in a seemingly random manner, and then declare it 
done.He then would really crank down on all the lock nuts for each tuning 
element, and the attachment for the step-recovery-diode.   "Gotta make these 
things tight, or the tuning will drift off"This concluded with him bashing 
the A4 on all 

[time-nuts] Book Review (RE: HP History with Dymec: "Becoming Hewlett Packard. Why Strategic Leadership Matters")

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Hi time-nuts,
I’ve read most of the book “Becoming Hewlett Packard.  Why Strategic Leadership 
Matters”, and promised a review.

I suspect that most of you would not enjoy the book that much.

It is written as an extended case study, in the style of a Graduate Business 
School Thesis.   The authors have some kind of faculty association with 
Stanford University Business School – and thus the interest in HP.

The book spends a lot of time setting a foundation for what kind of thinking is 
needed to strategically lead a company, then methodically walks through HP’s 
history of CEOs:  Dave Packard, Bill Hewlett, John Young, Lew Platt, Carli 
Fiorina, Mark Hurd, Leo Apotheker, and finally Meg Whitman.

The interesting Test and Measurement bits are in the Dave Packard section, 
where it describes how he crated the division structure for the company, with 
the 4 initial product lines:  Audio/Video, Frequency Counters, Microwave, and 
Oscilloscopes.  This worked great, because each business could operate 
independently, with their own R, marketing, manufacturing and building.
There is some history on the development of the product lines from a technical 
standpoint, but not much.  I suspect that the “Bill and Dave” book below would 
be more interesting to a technical audience.

The bulk of the book deals with the challenges HP CEOs had in adapting this 
independent division structure into an integrated company that can sell 
integrated computer system products.   Each CEO is dissected on their success, 
but mostly failures, to do this well.While written with a fairly positive 
tone, it is quite unvarnished in the struggles the CEOs had, from John Young 
on, to transform HP into a computer company.And how the “founders” Board of 
Directors, build by Packard in the 60s and 70s, was dysfunctional in their 
support of CEOs not named Hewlett or Packard.

Since the T business was spun off into Agilent in 1999, it was all computers 
and printers after that.   The inkjet printer organization that I joined in 
1993 was probably the most like the old HP after Agilent spun off, in that it 
is very technology driven, very vertically integrated where we invent almost 
all our components, and dominate the market.

I endured every CEO that is analyzed, so found the book quite interesting.   I 
watched HP, one of the most amazing places to work in the 1970s, transform into 
a company that could be generously be described as average today, but improving 
under Meg Whitman in my opinion.Things started to unravel under Lew Plat, 
were mixed and sliding under Carli (cheers were shouted in the building when 
her firing was announced), and miserable (but profitable) under Mark Hurd.   HP 
has been improving, from an employee perspective under Meg Whitman.On the 
PCs and Printers side of HP Inc./HP Enterprise split,  HP Inc. has been slowly 
improving in the last three years.

Conclusion:  If you like corporate history and business leadership analysis, 
the book is OK.   If you want technology insights, pass.

Hugh Rice


From: time-nuts  On Behalf Of Tom Curlee
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2019 12:22 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP History with Dymec: "Becoming Hewlett Packard. Why 
Strategic Leadership Matters"

Speaking of books about HP, I highly recommend "Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and 
Packard Built the Worlds Greatest Company". It covers the history of HP 
including the development of many of the landmark pieces of test equipment, the 
HP business model, and the company expansion from the garage to a 
multi-national corporation.. Very approachable- reads almost like a novel. 
Being a big HP fan, I can't say enough good about the book.

Tom
----
On Wed, 1/23/19, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) 
mailto:hugh.r...@hp.com>> wrote:

Subject: [time-nuts] HP History with Dymec: "Becoming Hewlett Packard. Why 
Strategic Leadership Matters"
To: "time-nuts@lists.febo.com<mailto:time-nuts@lists.febo.com>" 
mailto:time-nuts@lists.febo.com>>
Date: Wednesday, January 23, 2019, 5:41 PM

Hello Time Nuts,
Being a bit new to HP (only 35 years),
I never head of Dymec before.  A quick Google search
yielded this link, which is an excerpt from the book
"Becoming Hewlett Packard,  Why Strategic Leadership
Matters."You can read about 10 pages of the
book from the preview, which talks about HPs creation of the
Dymec corporation, which then became a division.
Scroll back to page 102 for some context.

https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=Zr1jDQAAQBAJ=PA104=PA104=dymec+company+history=bl=Q_66Bj1viA=ACfU3U2ITctr8yhZ_yXWCQ_v8qWClLXafw=en=X=2ahUKEwixtsCj-oTgAhXJh3AKHXd3DqMQ6AEwDHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage=dymec%20company%20history=false<https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=Zr1jDQAAQBAJ=PA104=PA104=dymec+company+history=bl=Q_66Bj1viA=ACfU3U2ITctr8yhZ_yXWCQ_v8qWClLXafw=en=X=2a

Re: [time-nuts] OCXO PLL gains?

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

> The 5061 had an analog double integrator using a $100 op amp.
> Maybe Hugh Rice can speak about that. You have to have the 2nd
> integrator to prevent a ramping error term from turning into a
> frequency offset instead of getting integrated out.

I never studied the control loop design on the 5061A/B.  It worked just fine, 
so I didn’t dig into it.
I’ll mention the $100 op-amp more in another story in the future, but it wasn’t 
nearly as exotic as it looks.
I recall it being a hybrid circuit monstrosity – a whole bunch of discrete 
components all potted in blue plastic, and about 2” x 2” in size.
My guess is that it was a high performance device, during the transition days 
from making op-amp with discrete parts on PCAs
(like the 5060A did in the 1960s), to fully integrated op-amps in the 1980s.   
An awkward teen-ager of electronics from the early 1970s, so to speak.

Modern IC op-amps probably could replace it just fine.   Our 
super-technician/engineer on the production engineering team, Dave Montgomery,
used to say we should replace it with and “Op-07”, his favorite high-end 
op-amp.   It costs $.45 each now, if you buy 1000.

Hugh



From: time-nuts  On Behalf Of Richard (Rick) 
Karlquist
Sent: Sunday, February 3, 2019 8:41 AM
To: Magnus Danielson ; Discussion of precise time and 
frequency measurement 
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] OCXO PLL gains?



On 2/2/2019 3:06 PM, Magnus Danielson wrote:

>>   We also used a double integrator
>> on the 5071A cesium standard, but cesium loops are NOT PLL's.
>
> Indeed, double-integrator in FLL is a separate class of problems.
>
> Didn't know it had double-integrator.
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus

The 5061 had an analog double integrator using a $100 op amp.
Maybe Hugh Rice can speak about that. You have to have the 2nd
integrator to prevent a ramping error term from turning into a
frequency offset instead of getting integrated out.

Rick

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[time-nuts] HP Stories: A Service Engineering perspective of the 5061A/B, and the incomparable Chuck Little

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Years ago, an old HP Santa Clara Engineer attributed HP's service and support 
policies to Dave Packard:  "HP will provide outstanding service to our 
customers, and we will make money doing it."   Even in the late 1980s, 50 years 
after HP was founded, the legacy of Packard's influence was still strong in the 
Test and Measurement half of HP.   (The computer half, while bigger than T, 
wasn't the essence of historical HP like T)   HP was very proud of making 
the best test equipment in the world.  Remember, HP stood for "High 
Performance", and "High Price".   Keeping these products working well in 
customer hands was important.And making profits was important too.   
Packard made several famous speeches over the years where he made it clear that 
profits were the foundation of the company.  (When delivered to a group of 
General Managers, he would also make it clear if they couldn't manage their 
divisions profitably, he would find someone else who could.)   HP didn't exist 
just to make profits, but without profits we didn't exist.   And profitability 
was the best measure of a valued contribution to the market.

Santa Clara Division, which had the Frequency and Time products, had a 
department devoted to service and support, which included the team that wrote 
and edited the Service and Maintenance manuals for Frequency and Time products. 
 One of my jobs at the end of the 5061B development was to go through the 5061A 
manual, and update it to reflect the 5061B we were now selling.   We had 15 
years of 5061A production change orders to integrate, plus everything we fixed 
on the 5061B. Working with the tech writer assigned to the task, we went 
through the entire manual, line by line.   This was a great lesson in being 
thorough in the details, as the Service Manual was often the only document, 
both inside and outside of HP, which covered the entire product.  I've carried 
this lesson with me in the decades since.

The Service Engineering team was managed by Chuck Little, a cheerful fun loving 
guy, with his own "time-nuts" history.  He had been on some of the early 5060A 
"Flying Clock"  around the word trips HP sponsored  to demonstrate the theory 
of relativity, or to calibrate official time at different international 
locations.  Someone in marketing got the idea to publish a newsletter to 
customers called "The HP Standard", which had articles about future products, 
applications, and service information.   In this, they advertised "The Cesium 
Seminar," a one week class on tuning, servicing, troubleshooting and repairing 
the 5061A/B Cesium Beam Frequency Standards.   As the Production Engineer for 
the 5061B, I was recruited to help.  My job was to gather up a bunch of 5061s 
and assorted test equipment for use in the class, and loiter in the back of the 
room while Chuck taught the class.   There would be about a dozen students, 
split into small teams each with a test patient 5061 and troubleshooting gear.  
The classes were great fun.   The students were mostly senior technicians from 
high end standards labs. Many were X-military NCO "Tech Sergeant" type 
guys.  Many worked for the hard-core defense industry companies or their 
contractors.   They had all kinds of "interesting" stories to tell, especially 
to my young, unsophisticated, untraveled ears.

It was enlightening to observe the difference between seasoned technicians, and 
"engineers."   If you actually wanted something done, these were the guys to 
call.   Their knowledge of electronics was a lot more intuitive than 
classically trained engineers, and many had an appropriately cynical view of 
engineering.  Even HP had some engineers that were all theory, and frankly 
useless when it came time to actually do something useful.   You all know the 
type.   One of the biggest compliments I got from a few of them is that HP 
engineers (and me specifically) were not like the engineers at their companies. 
  First off, they were surprised we were not unionized, which gave us a lot of 
freedom in what we did.   And we actually showed the techs some respect, 
valuing their opinions and skills.

In leading the class, Chuck did two brilliant things.  First, he would go over 
the entire 5061A/B design, and explain from a high, system level perspective, 
how a Cesium Beam Frequency Standard worked. Attached is the overall block 
diagram if you are interested and want to follow along.   He would spend a day, 
starting at the overall block diagram level, and then slowly zoom into each sub 
system, drawing simple but useful pictures and diagrams on a big white board.   
I have a photo of him standing at the white board in front of a crude drawing 
of a CBT, with a silly grin on his face while explaining the operation of this 
amazing machine, telling stories and cracking jokes along the way.   His 
explanation would go something like this:

(If you want to follow along, download the block diagram from Chapter 8 of the 
5061B 

[time-nuts] HP History with Dymec: "Becoming Hewlett Packard. Why Strategic Leadership Matters"

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Hello Time Nuts,
Being a bit new to HP (only 35 years), I never head of Dymec before.   A quick 
Google search yielded this link, which is an excerpt from the book "Becoming 
Hewlett Packard,  Why Strategic Leadership Matters." You can read about 10 
pages of the book from the preview, which talks about HPs creation of the Dymec 
corporation, which then became a division.  Scroll back to page 102 for some 
context.

https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=Zr1jDQAAQBAJ=PA104=PA104=dymec+company+history=bl=Q_66Bj1viA=ACfU3U2ITctr8yhZ_yXWCQ_v8qWClLXafw=en=X=2ahUKEwixtsCj-oTgAhXJh3AKHXd3DqMQ6AEwDHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage=dymec%20company%20history=false

I plan to buy a copy of the book and read it on my trip to Hong Kong this 
weekend.   If it is interesting, I'll write a quick review for you all.

Tom V:  Let us know if we are wandering too far off topic for time-nuts.

Hugh Rice



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Re: [time-nuts] Part 2: Atomic Clocks: It is important that they keep good time.

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Hi Tom,
The picture I attached was from the 5061B sales brochure, and probably taken in 
1986.
I recognize the guy in the photo, I think he was a marketing engineer, but I 
can't remember his name.
Hugh

From: time-nuts  On Behalf Of Tom Van Baak
Sent: Saturday, January 5, 2019 11:16 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Part 2: Atomic Clocks: It is important that they keep 
good time.

Hugh,

What year is your photo from? Here's a similar, but older photo of hp's house 
standard:

http://leapsecond.com/history/Benchmark.htm<http://leapsecond.com/history/Benchmark.htm>

This was from roughly 1966 (note the dual hp 5060A). The HPJ issue containing 
that article is here:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1966-08.pdf

The house standard is featured on page 20, but there's also a glimpse of it on 
the top of page 15.

/tvb

- Original Message -
From: "Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)" 
mailto:hugh.r...@hp.com>>
To: mailto:time-nuts@lists.febo.com>>
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2019 4:07 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] Part 2: Atomic Clocks: It is important that they keep good 
time.


HP's Santa Clara Division (SCD), in addition to building the Cesium Beam 
Frequency Standard Atomic Clocks, was an official time-keeper for the U.S. 
Naval Observatory, maintaining the west coast reference for Coordinated 
Universal Time. This was done in our standards lab where we kept a rack of 
several HP Cesium standards. Hopefully the attached picture of the lab comes 
through for some of you.

...


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[time-nuts] HP 5061B Cesium Standard Operating and Service Manual Scans uploaded.

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Hello Time Nuts,

I was able to scan the entire HP 5061B Operating and Service Manual, including 
all schematics, before I mailed it to a fellow time-nut (Skip Withrow), and 
uploaded it to:

http://www.ko4bb.com/getsimple/index.php?id=manuals

Look under HP Agilent, and then under HP 5061.

I also uploaded a copy of the sales brochure for the 5061B.   I thought it was 
interesting to see how HP was promoting the cesium standards back in the day.  
Some interesting tidbits on other PFS products in the brochure.

Could one of you 5061 collectors down load the manuals, and let me know of this 
all worked OK?

Hopefully someone will be able to fix an old cesium standard with this.

Hugh Rice

PS - I also have scans of all the frequency and time HP application notes:   
52-1, 52-2, 52-4.Some are available elsewhere on line.  Is it worth adding 
these to this web-site?



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[time-nuts] Atomic Clocks: It is important that they keep good time, Part 1

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

The clock display on a HP Cesium Standard is a bit of a gimmick.   The legend I 
was told:  An Admiral was touring a nuclear submarine, and was being shown the 
"Atomic Clocks"  in the navigation section, and said:  "If the Navy is going to 
pay 40 grand for an atomic clock, I damn well better be able to set my watch by 
it."And so the need for the clock display was born.   (There is likely 
almost nothing true in that heavily embellished story)

The 1PPS output, clock display and backup battery were new features added when 
HP upgraded the 5060A to the 5061A in the early 1970s.   The 1PPS circuit was 
pretty cool.  Dividing the 10MHz signal down to a narrow 1 pulse-per-second 
signal was straightforward, but they added a delay circuit, actuated with a 
series of thumbwheel 10 position switches, that would allow you to program a 
delay from 0.1uS to 1 second.Essentially, set the clock (1PPS signal) to 
match another reference to within one cycle of the 10MHz input, or 100 
nano-seconds.The cosmetic human readable display was driven by the delayed 
1PPS signal.Since the clock is "only" human readable, their accuracy is 
essentially +/- 1 second.But those "in the know" realize that when the 
clock switches to the next second, they are accurate to +/- 100 nano-seconds.  
The propagation delay through the display electronics would be tactfully 
unmentioned.That should be good enough for the Admiral.

The first 5061A used an analog style clock manufactured by "Patek Philippe".   
But it wasn't too many years before Patek Philippe obsoleted the analog 
electro-mechanical clock, and HP had to design a replacement.  This is the more 
common LED digital display seen on later 5061As.The catch:  HP needed to 
support the old 5061A's that had the analog clock.  So the new LED assembly was 
designed to be backward compatible service and support component too.Some 
poor engineer had to come up with a solution that fit the electronics in the 
round hole used by the Patek clock.   3 circular PCAs were used, electrically 
connected with pins from one PCB to the other, so it would be a drop in 
replacement.It was a hack of epic proportions.  Hard to manufacture, 
expensive, power hungry.  But it worked and was reliable.

As part of the 5061B product, we wanted to cut clean from the baggage of the 
5061A past, and didn't have to make all our assemblies backward compatible.   
My job as a brand new engineer was to design a sensible clock display.   
Cheaper, easier to build, using less power.   (I recall that the power drain 
from the clock/LED assembly was significant enough to materially impact the 
battery backup time.)

This was my first ever digital design, and I had a great time coming up with a 
circuit that would go from 1PPS to a hours, minutes, seconds digital display, 
including a feature that would allow you to easily set the clock by pushing 
buttons on the back side of the PCA, by sticking a small screwdriver through 
the cooling holes on the top cover.  I choose to use a LCD display, for its low 
power.  I agonized for weeks on what logic family of digital parts to use.  
LS-TTL?   4000 CMOS?   I eventually choose the 74HC series of CMOS components.  
 They were fairly new to market, which I hoped to indicate they would have a 
long life, since we were going to build the 5061B "forever".   And all the 
components I needed were catalog parts.   (Counters, display drivers, AND 
gates, etc.)

In my youthful ignorance, I made a few mistakes that Roberto had to clean up 
later.   First, our PC Layout team was experimenting with new auto routing 
software tools, and choose this design to experiment on.   Low frequency, low 
power, simple.  What could go wrong?The auto-routed layout worked fine, 
even though the routing between the components looked like the output of a 
random number generator. (If you download the scans of the 5061B manual I 
uploaded, you can see the random trace routing in the picture of the clock 
assembly.)Next, I didn't appreciate that the 74HC logic family was pretty 
fast, with snappy rise and fall times.   Capacitive coupling of signals between 
traces due to fast edges was a foreign concept to me.   Finally, in my 
overzealous quest to save every microwatt in this design, I used 100K resistors 
for voltage dividers and pull downs, rather than a more sensible 10K or 1K 
values.

My clock display that worked so nice in all our prototypes (1 sample), turned 
out to be capable of catching a stray glitch now and then, since the 1PPS 
signal wound all over the PCB before it was input to the first IC.After a 
few years of production, some customers complained that the clock would 
sometimes skip a second.

The Atomic Clock didn't keep accurate time!

I had moved on from PFS production engineering to Frequency Counter Production 
Engineering Management when this was discovered, and Roberto called me up and 
gave me hell about my crappy 

Re: [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

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

.   Redesigning 
the 5061A yielded zero growth (the demand for cesium standards was pretty flat) 
and thus not a priority.A very light touch by manufacturing to keep it 
viable was appropriate.

This email chain has unleashed a flood of memories from 30 years ago.   
Hopefully a few of you find this walk down memory lane interesting. I have 
a few more stories in the que if any of you are still interested.

Hugh Rice


From: time-nuts  On Behalf Of Richard (Rick) 
Karlquist
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2018 7:35 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 
; Magnus Danielson 
Cc: mag...@rubidium.se
Subject: Re: [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

The HP way (AFAIK) was as follows:

They were making the 5061A and the
default philosophy was don't fix it
if it ain't broke. However, products
reach a tipping point. In the case
of the 5061A, the obsolescence of the
Nixie tube was the straw that broke
the camel's back. But there were a
bunch of other issues that had also
accumulated a critical mass.

I was hired into HP in 1979 to work in the
Precision Frequency Sources R section
to work on the 10816 rubidium. That
project was eventually cancelled by a "new sheriff
in town" event upstairs, and took the
section with it. So they had to somehow
boot leg the 61B without an R section.

A production engineer
named Robert (I forgot his last name) was
the project manager. He basically tried
to keep his head down and not attract a
lot of attention. I am thinking that all
the money came out of the production engineering
budget.

Another HP way thing is that we would
go from A to B in order to get the clock
running on the end of support life. Upper
management would be not be suspicious of an
A to B, as opposed to a new product number,
which would be a red flag. The cesium line was
to be run as a cash cow, period. Len pulled a
rabbit out of the hat when he got permission for
the 5071A.

So the 61B was a bridge product to keep the
plane flying until the 71A came out. It
basically contained no gratuitous improvements,
only stuff that had to be fixed.

Rick

On 12/30/2018 5:23 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:
> Dear Hugh,
>
> Many thanks for another nice post from the good old times.
> Was a nice morning reading.
>
> I didn't know that the 5061B was rebuilt with removing odd parts in
> mind, but it makes sense. Interesting system with Code 1 to Code 4.
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus
>
> On 12/29/18 5:36 AM, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote:
>> My “Test and Measurement” days with HP, from 1984 to 1992, were all in 
>> manufacturing (a.k.a. production) engineering. A major task was dealing with 
>> the endless list of obsoleted components, since many of our products had 
>> designs dating back 10 or 20 years, into the wild west early days of 
>> semiconductors and integrated circuits.
>>
>> In addition to Frequency and Time products (which we called “PFS” – 
>> Precision Frequency Sources), HP’s Santa Clara Division (SCD) also had the 
>> frequency counter product line. I managed the production engineering team 
>> for counters from 1988 to 1992; the job that I had to pass the R 
>> engineering new hire interview to qualify for. This technology was invented 
>> in the 1950s and even with many new models and upgrades, we still were 
>> shipping “classics” products from the early 1970s in low volume in about 
>> 1990. The 5340 microwave counter and 5328 universal counters come to mind. 
>> We kept raising the prices, because we had newer, better, cheaper counters 
>> for sale. But the old ones kept selling because they were designed into some 
>> DOD test system, and the hassle of designing in a new instrument was more 
>> expensive than buying an new (but obsolete) counter for our customers. The 
>> parade of obsolete components seemed to never end on these old units. I 
>> recall talking to the marketing manager, Murli Thurmali (sp?) about 
>> obsoleting some of these products, and he would wisely respond: “Tell me how 
>> you are going to replace the million dollars of lost revenue.” The 
>> manufacturing manager, Chuck Taubman, would likewise say: “Our margins are 
>> well over 50% on these products, that money pays overhead, which is our 
>> salaries. Show me $500K in cost savings before we obsolete them.” Turns out 
>> that even though they were a hassle, it was relatively easy money, so we 
>> kept building and selling them.
>>
>> The PFS products were similar in this regard. The product line had largely 
>> been developed in the 1960s and 1970s, volumes were low, but prices and 
>> margins were high. Yeah, they took some effort to keep i

[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

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

My “Test and Measurement” days with HP, from 1984 to 1992, were all in 
manufacturing (a.k.a. production) engineering.   A major task was dealing with 
the endless list of obsoleted components, since many of our products had 
designs dating back 10 or 20 years, into the wild west early days of 
semiconductors and integrated circuits.

In addition to Frequency and Time products (which we called “PFS” – Precision 
Frequency Sources), HP’s Santa Clara Division (SCD) also had the frequency 
counter product line.  I managed the production engineering team for counters 
from 1988 to 1992; the job that I had to pass the R engineering new hire 
interview to qualify for.   This technology was invented in the 1950s and even 
with many new models and upgrades, we still were shipping “classics” products 
from the early 1970s in low volume in about 1990. The 5340 microwave counter 
and 5328 universal counters come to mind.   We kept raising the prices, because 
we had newer, better, cheaper counters for sale.   But the old ones kept 
selling because they were designed into some DOD test system, and the hassle of 
designing in a new instrument was more expensive than buying an new (but 
obsolete) counter for our customers.The parade of obsolete components 
seemed to never end on these old units.I recall talking to the marketing 
manager, Murli Thurmali (sp?) about obsoleting some of these products, and he 
would wisely respond:  “Tell me how you are going to replace the million 
dollars of lost revenue.”  The manufacturing manager, Chuck Taubman, would 
likewise say:  “Our margins are well over 50% on these products, that money 
pays overhead, which is our salaries.   Show me $500K in cost savings before we 
obsolete them.”   Turns out that even though they were a hassle, it was 
relatively easy money, so we kept building and selling them.

The PFS products were similar in this regard.  The product line had largely 
been developed in the 1960s and 1970s, volumes were low, but prices and margins 
were high.Yeah, they took some effort to keep in production, but the 
development was done, and it was good money.  HP was a business after all, and 
if we didn’t make money, we didn’t have jobs.The was a great education for 
me, brand new to management, learning that HP may be a cool technology company, 
but we only had jobs as long as the business was profitable, and preferably 
growing.   Nothing was guaranteed.

HP instituted a system of “Codes” for parts, to measure how well we were 
designing our products for long production lives and low materials management 
overhead costs.   Code 1 was best.  Industry standard parts available from many 
sources cheaply.Code 2 were OK to use.   Code 3 was something really 
special, and needed a good reason to include.   Code 4 brought the scorn of 
procurement engineers, and brought significant management review.

The easy way out for production engineering to deal with obsoleted component 
was a life time buy.   The Materials group hated this, because they had 
hundreds of other parts already on life time buys.  What if they get lost or 
damaged, or the last batch was defective, or the product lasted longer than we 
expected?A product like the 5061A, at ~200 build per year, was a typical 
challenge.   10 more years of life?   Buy 2400 parts?   Perhaps double it to 
5000 parts.   The response from component buyers was easy to predict:   “But 
VendorX wants $2.31 for this ancient transistor.  We’re not tying up $10K in 
one part.We have dozens of parts like this, we can’t afford all this 
inventory.”So we would try harder.  Maybe a 2N222A, or a 2N3904 will work.  
 Procurements loves these parts.   We’d try them out, and hope we didn’t miss 
something in the qualification.  New parts never had the same specs at the old 
parts, and the original designer was long gone, and design intent documentation 
non-existent.   I bet half the time the old transistor just happened to be on 
the engineers bench back in 1969, worked fine, and he just used it. The 
Code 1,2,3,4 process was designed to discourage this kind of design thinking.

When we upgraded the 5061A Cesium Standard to the 5061B in 1984-85, the primary 
objective was to eliminate all the code 3 and code  4 parts.  Designing out all 
the old stuff wound up being a fantastic education in component technologies, 
reading and interpreting data sheets, dealing with vendors, worrying about 
inventory control and so on.   Our attitude was trying to make a product we 
could ship indefinitely, even though it was already over 20 years old.We 
had a history of selling PFS instruments for decades, and we were preparing for 
decades more.

Bob kb8tq wrote:  “In the case of the 5071, I’d bet a pretty good brand of six 
pack that nobody on the planet would have guessed 20 years ago that it still 
would be in production today.”

Well, I can’t prove that Bob would lose this bet (Maybe Rick K could), and I 
didn’t 

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

[Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems)]

Hi Magnus –

To resolve the cliff hangers:  

There really wasn’t a way to “fix” the top cover effect.   Looking back now as 
a career engineer, rather than from my inexperienced view from 1986, what I 
realize is that in any precise application, there will always be something 
holding you a step away from perfection.You can’t tune this out in every 
individual product. One challenge with the 5061B is that it was a *primary* 
standard, meaning that it didn’t need calibration, by definition.   If you 
spent a bunch of effort calibrating a unit, is it still a primary standard? 
With careful enough measurements, you could detect that all were not identical. 
(We would do this by comparing the phase drift of the 10MHz signal against 
our house standard.  Over a few hours, an instrument would drift a few 
nano-seconds. That is, the unit under test was different than the house 
standard.

But it then begs the question, which one is right?   Time keeping labs, like 
the one with NBS in Colorado, or the west coast standard in our building in 
Santa Clara CA, or the one in Geneva, would determine the “best” time by 
averaging a bunch of primary standards.  The unit that was closest to the 
average would be declared the house standard. (At least that is how I remember 
it worked.)   Essentially establishing truth by taking a vote. (As many on 
this list know so well.)

For a specific instrument shipping to an isolated customer, where they didn’t 
have another standard to compare against, you had to take your cesium standard 
as perfect.  It was the primary standard after all.   As the instrument would 
get handled or power cycled, it could shift a touch each time.  And God forbid 
if you took the top cover off for some reason!   All of Felix’s fine tuning, 
screw by screw, would be lost.   (I don’t think he actually hand tuned each 
screw on every product.  More likely, he pointed out that if the screws were 
removed or tightened differently, the frequency offset would change.   Not an 
ideal behavior. )

From a practical “factory” approach to the 5061 products, we guaranteed that 
every cesium standard was within specs.   We couldn’t guarantee that they would 
be exactly centered (if we could, we would tighten up the specs), or would 
always remain centered (or even the same) if you messed around it with it.
Just comfortably within specs.

So, with no disrespect to Felix and his efforts to make things better, at some 
point, work to perfect each unit becomes silly.   You could fool yourself into 
thinking it was better, but then only if the instrument was never touched, 
moved, power cycled, etc.And even then, would it still be exactly the same 
months later?

Fortunately, the managers and senior engineers had a realistic perspective on 
how perfect was achievable.   Felix was good in that he kept us from being 
sloppy, and sometimes would find real things that we screwed up.But 
torqueing screws carefully (and uniquely for each product), or twisting cables 
left vs. right  was a step too far.  To really make the cesium standards 
better, they needed a better design.And that was what the 5071A was all 
about.   But that is a story for another day.

Hugh Rice



Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2018 08:22:05 +0100
From: Magnus Danielson 
mailto:mag...@rubidium.dyndns.org>>
To: time-nuts@lists.febo.com<mailto:time-nuts@lists.febo.com>
Cc: mag...@rubidium.se<mailto:mag...@rubidium.se>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP Cesium Standards in the International
Atomic Time Scale, the legend of Felix Lazarus, and the "top cover
effect".
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Dear Hugh,

I really enjoyed reading this! You have several cliff-hangers in there:
Did you (HP) fix/reduce the top cover issue? Did you alter the setup to
meet tighter specs? Did you fix the oven controller cable offset?
What else war-stories do you got?

It is by war-stories one shares knowledge, lessons learned is not
without its background and at least you have a great story.

Cheers,
Magnus

On 12/20/18 12:36 AM, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote:
> Hello Time Nuts,
> I found this HP Application note in my archives, and attached a scanned copy:
>
> Application Note 52-4. Contribution of HP clocks to the BIH's International 
> Atomic Time Scale (IATS).
> I also found a couple of archives for HP application notes for anyone who may 
> be interested:
> http://hparchive.com/appnotes<http://hparchive.com/appnotes>
> https://www.keysight.com/main/editorial.jspx?cc=US=eng=1127547=1127547=zzfindclassic-app-notes<https://www.keysight.com/main/editorial.jspx?cc=US=eng=1127547=1127547=zzfindclassic-app-notes>
>
>
> It is an interesting snapshot at the method of keeping the official IATS 
> time, a