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<div class="column"><p><font size="4"><font face="Sabon">Jeremy, I was faced with a version of your question when we did <i>The HP Phenomenon</i>, Stanford Press, 2009. </font></font></p><p><font size="4"><font face="Sabon">The issue centered around the company lore, continued to this day on HP’s website, that the company began by selling eight oscillators to Walt Disney.</font></font></p><p><font size="4"><font face="Sabon">Cursory beginning research in HP’s archives revealed three things:</font></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. the number was NINE, not EIGHT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. this was the third order, not the first</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. the sale was to Bud Hawkins at Disney Studios; Walt Disney had no idea, then or later, that such a purchase was made or who HP was.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I talked with the HP archivist, and the original archivist (ex-Bell Labs, later HP archive creator and collaborator on the book The HP Way, and by then archivist at Agilent). I also traced the change to HP’s first public relations director, and five of the ‘old guard’ who zealously guarded HP reputations (who had urged us to write our book). All were unconcerned, whereas for factoids surrounding their own historical work, they were adamant and vociferous about us ‘getting it right.'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, below are the paragraphs in the opening chapter, which is matter-of-fact about NINE. The footnote (#5) is lengthy, explaining what we found. I don’t know that we handled this rightly, but this was how we solved the issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The upshot was that HP sued me and Stanford, to ‘cease-and-desist’ because of monumental errors in the book, starting with claiming it is NINE, not EIGHT.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The result of that skirmish was that the Stanford Press folk were delighted, saying this will quadruple sales, if HP says it is banned. The suit was dropped, and HP these days uses the book in their executive training, so they’ve relaxed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The chapter inclusion, pp. 9-10</b> (<font color="#ff4449">red emphasis for this note)</font></font></div><p><font size="4"><font face="Sabon">The HP saga began with a clever but simple idea: to insert a small
lightbulb into one side of a circuit as the resistance element, rather than
a standard resistor. Whether Bill Hewlett understood the probable effect
ahead of time is unimportant—he instantly recognized the result when he
turned it on. He had constructed an automatically controlled amplitude
limiter for a resistance-capacitance signal generator. His innovation was
adequate for a fifteen-page engineer’s thesis from Stanford University in
</font><span style="font-family: Sabon;">1939</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">; it was also good enough for U.S. patent number </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">2</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">,</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">268</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">,</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">872</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-family: Sabon; vertical-align: 3pt;">4 </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">And
it led to the Model </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">200</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">A Oscillator, a brand-new product from a brand-
new company named Hewlett-Packard after Hewlett won the coin toss </span></font><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">for the right to put his name first. <font color="#ff4449">The first big order—$</font></span><font color="#ff4449"><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">517</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">50 </span></font><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;"><font color="#ff4449">for nine
units</font>—was garnered from Walt Disney Studios in </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1939</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">, intended for use
in creating and balancing stereo soundtrack music for the <font color="#62d0ff">cartoon</font> <font color="#ff455c">movie</font> “Fantasia.” The movie was a pioneering effort, with six individual soundtracks,
two mixing tracks, and a metronome track to capture Leopold Stokowski’s orchestra in very high-fidelity sound. One oscillator per track was
required; HP’s new machine, offered at $</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">54</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">50 </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">versus the General Radio
machines at $</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">400 </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">each, was an exciting find for Disney’s chief engineer
Johnny (Bud) Hawkins. But as it turned out, the HP </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">200</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">A didn’t have
quite the frequency range desired. So Hewlett changed the capacitor and
charged $</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">3</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">00 </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">more per unit, and Disney actually bought the company’s
second product, the </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">200</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">B. Over time, at least twenty-four variations of
the lamp-stabilized oscillator would be offered for sale.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon; vertical-align: 3pt;">5</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;"><b>The endnote p. 548</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">5</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">. This is one of those Sherlock Holmes detective stories about which historians do
battle. Every reference to the </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">200 </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">oscillator history in </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon; font-style: italic;">Watt’s Current </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">issues for the first
twenty-four years of the company (notably the fifth and tenth anniversary issues, August </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">5</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">,
</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1944</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">, and November </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1949</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">), cites nine units for the Disney order. Oddly, when </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon; font-style: italic;">HP Measure
</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">was launched in July </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1963 </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">as a worldwide employee newsletter, the “official number” shifted
inexplicably to eight rather than nine (</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon; font-style: italic;">cf. </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">the HP twenty-fifth anniversary issue, September-
October </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1964</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">[</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">3</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">]). David Packard, </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon; font-style: italic;">The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company
</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">(New York: HarperCollins, </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1995</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">), Packard’s autobiography, derived from the twenty-fifth
anniversary article, cited eight units, each at a recollected price of $</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">71</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">50</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">. Subsequent
biographers have inferred that Packard mispriced the original units, but quickly realized his
error and astutely raised the price as soon as possible, from the original $</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">54</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">50 </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">to $</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">71</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">50
</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">each. The $</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">71</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">50 </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">price, however, wasn’t established until December </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1940</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.</span></p></div></div></div><p><font size="4"><span style="font-family: Sabon;">Al Bagley, in composing the Los Altos Museum exhibit about Dave and Lucile Packard
in January </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">2008</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">, found Lucile Packard’s original cash ledger, in which a big shipment to
Disney accounts for a sale of $</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">517</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">50 </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">for nine units at $</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">57</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">50 </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">each. The first two units
(standard HP </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">200</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">A’s) were sold at list price of $</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">54</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">50 </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">(to Caltech and the Radio-Television
Company); Hewlett charged $</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">3</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">00 </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">more per unit to Disney and renumbered the units to
the HP </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">200</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">B to cover the changed capacitor and the rackmount front panel costs. The next
unit, another HP </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">200</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">A, was sold to MIT for $</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">54</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">50</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.
</span></font></p><p><font size="4"><span style="font-family: Sabon;">In Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett, </span><span style="font-family: Sabon; font-style: italic;">History Documentation </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">(Palo Alto, CA: HP TV
Network, A Hewlett Family Production, </span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">1983</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">), Hewlett recalled that the original price was
$</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">54</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">.</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">40</span><span style="font-family: Sabon;">, having associated the price with the longitude of the the old Oregon Territory–
Canadian dispute; his recollection was erroneous by a dime. Packard couldn’t recall the
price or the association when asked.
</span></font></p><p><span style="font-family: Sabon;"><font size="4">The Southwest Museum of Engineering, Computing and Communication has long insisted
that nine is the right number, citing both the original salesperson, William Stancil, and the
Disney archives. See Ed Sharpe, “Hewlett-Packard: The Early Years,” <a href="http://www.smecc">http://www.smecc</a></font></span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">.org/hewlett-packard,_the_early_years.htm. William V. Stancil, who had introduced Norm
Neely to Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, sold the units to Bud Hawkins at Disney through
Neely Enterprises. Stancil wrote a letter dated January </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">18</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">, </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1989</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">, to Bill Hewlett (which is
posted on the SMECC website) that cites the nine units twice. In the fiftieth anniversary
</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon; font-style: italic;">HP Measure </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">issue, Jean Burke Hoppe devoted a half page to Stancil’s role, but omitted his
reference to nine units. Hoppe, “What a Mickey Mouse Way to Start a Company” </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon; font-style: italic;">HP
Measure </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">(September-October </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">1989</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">): </span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">8</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">–</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">11</span><span style="font-size: large; font-family: Sabon;">. </span></p><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div><div><div>On Oct 9, 2014, at 8:18 AM, Jeremy C. Reed <<a href="mailto:reed@reedmedia.net">reed@reedmedia.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">On Wed, 8 Oct 2014, Mike Willegal wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Though we are lucky enough to be able to talk to many people that <br>experienced the events, first hand, I have found that interviews done <br>30, 40 or 50 years after the fact is fraught with the difficulty of <br>people remembering exactly what happened. Many people ?remember? what <br>has been most frequently reported over the past decade or so. <br>Researchers in Civil War history have found the same thing and are <br>more and more relying upon contemporary evidence such as journals, <br>newspapers and letters.<br></blockquote><br>For the book I am authoring, I started keeping track of mistakes, such <br>as wrong dates and misspelled names, in my sources, including from <br>previous "history" articles and books and my own interviews. I have <br>found only around 20 mistakes. In some cases, I have found that my <br>interviewees have misstated facts and dates (in most cases from the <br>events they personally participated in the 1970s and 1980s). I have <br>gone back to the interview subjects with my other cited facts and they <br>have agreed with me, but they state that they don't remember.<br><br>Some of the mistakes are in the contemporary documents (such as <br>misspelled surnames in court documents) or history papers having wrong <br>dates or misarranged chronologies (such as saying some software was <br>invented after it was shipped) even when only a couple years removed <br>from the events.<br><br>Do you have any advice on how to document history mistakes, so later <br>researchers don't hit the same issues -- or so later historians don't <br>follow the wrong path? Some ideas I have considered are to add footnotes <br>or comments to my bibliography that explain that the cited source or <br>even sources misspelled some name or stated a wrong date and then <br>explain briefly where the correct or assumed correct details came from.<br><br>I don't think I want to explain about the mistakes in the content itself <br>as it will be distracting.<br><br>A different type of mistake is where someone acknowledges someone more <br>significantly than they deserve or maybe more than the recipient <br>believes. In other words, taking more credit and giving more credit than <br>is due. For example, for over 30 years, for a software technology, <br>various "stories", corresponding release notes, and histories said a <br>developer had invented the work. When I interviewed him, he told me he <br>didn't know why the developer who really did the good work gave him the <br>credit but he wanted me to be clear in my work that the other person was <br>the proponent and key inventor behind the technology. I wasn't able to <br>interview the other person, but since my contact did fully partipate in <br>this software technology, I plan to use his version of the story. <br>Explaining about the different versions of the story may be distracting <br>in my book. (But also thinking about it from another view -- maybe both <br>of them wanted to credit the other.)<br><br>For what it is worth, the person who documented the credit is well known <br>for acknowledging many others in his detailed software release notes, <br>interviews, and documentation. It has been very useful for me to find <br>others to interview -- but in many cases, they told me their work was <br>insignificant. I guess some people like to give credit to many others <br>for their own work, which may cause mistakes in history.<br><br>How do you document history mistakes?<br><br> Jeremy C. Reed<br><br>echo 'EhZ[h ^jjf0%%h[[Zc[Z_W$d[j%Xeeai%ZW[ced#]dk#f[d]k_d%' | \<br> tr '#-~' '\-.-{'<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>This email is relayed from <a href="mailto:members@sigcis.org">members@sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/">http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members">http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members</a><br></blockquote></div><br></body></html>