Re: Going to Nashville! Message #35 Posted by Jim Horn on 19 July 2012, 11:47 a.m., in response to message #34 by Tim Wessman
Agreed, Tim. HP's willingness to put the company jewels in the hands of non-employees is truely remarkable. Especially in light of the rampant desire to know what's coming ahead of time that's been the case since they started all this in the '70s.
At the Corvallis HHC (1981?), there was much anticipation and rumor mongering about HP's first hand-held computer, the forthcoming HP-75, code named "Kangaroo". As an HP employee in their Signal Analysis Division, Santa Rosa, California, I was involved in coordinating plans for use of the also-new HP-IL with the HP70000 Modular Measurement System. One result is that when I arrived at the conference, Corvallis gave me a prototype '75 with its code in an external box of EPROMs along with a pile of documentation.
Needless to say, that went into the trunk of my VW and I was paranoid to keep it out of sight.
At the conference, one of the door prizes someone won was a rare HP-65 leather case. That was unique in that it had a separate portion to hold a case of magnetic cards and was greatly desired by many HP-67 and HP-41 owners. Because of its design, it was known since 1975 (when the '65 came out) as a Kangaroo case. So, when I saw it at the conference, I impulsively said, "Wow, a Kangaroo case!"
In milliseconds, the happy owner of the new case was swarmed by excited HHC attendees sporting cameras, rulers and notepads, hoping to derive something about the forthcoming Kangaroo / HP-75.
My protestations that my statement referred to the HP-65 fell on deaf ears.
Funny, in retrospect. But my hat is off to Tim, Cyrille, and the rest of the great HP calculator team for the work they do and the trust they have in this remarkable group of enthusiasts.
Jim Horn (left HP in 1989 - now designing unmanned aircraft)
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