Interesting quote about old (calculator) times at HP
Message #1 Posted by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) on 29 Sept 2003, 6:56 p.m.
The following is a quote from an article titled "Semantic Services" by Robert E. Filman (IEEE Internet Computing magazine Editor in Chief).
... "The other [story] was from a friend who had worked at Hewlett Packard on the first handheld {scientific} calculator. When he asked the information system accounting folks how much profit HP had made on that invention, they responded with a list of 43 questions to clarify what he meant by “profit.” (For example, “How should earnings and losses on foreign currency futures transactions be treated?”)" ...
The article has (otherwise) nothing to do with calculators, and appeared in the IEEE Internet Computing magazine, July-August 2003, pages 4 to 6. It can be found in the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library (there is no charge for this particular article), the URL is:
http://csdl.computer.org/comp/mags/ic/2003/04/w4004.pdf
It seems that, while those were glorious times at HP, the seeds of certain situations that we regret today were already planted...
Edited: 29 Sept 2003, 10:08 p.m.
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