The AM Forum
March 28, 2024, 02:08:43 PM *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
 
   Home   Help Calendar Links Staff List Gallery Login Register  
Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Some good news  (Read 2439 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
N9NEO
Member

Offline Offline

Posts: 284


« on: April 28, 2005, 06:40:18 PM »

Here is an interesting volley between a Ham and Agilent concerning putting old manuals into the public domain.  It shows just how much value a well penned essay can have.  I have no reason to believe it a hoax.  Hope it reads ok, I didn't do any formatting.  Thanks Sam!

Dear Mr. Simon,

I have recently become aware that the documents for discontinued or
out
of support Hewlett-Packard and Agilent products have been removed from
the BAMA site due to copyright infringement.

Many radio amateurs like myself cut their teeth on products by major
test equipment manufacturers like Agilent/HP and that experience has
lead many of us to recommend and specify Agilent/HP product in our
profession as well.

Due to the abundance of many venerable Agilent/HP test equipment
products now available from government and other surplus sources the
hobbyist and amateur radio operator alike can afford to equip their
home
lab or "ham" shack very economically. This seems like a very good way
to
recycle our tax dollars.

Unfortunately it seems that when the equipment has been surplussed the
manuals are usually no where to be found. When one does find original
manuals they are often only available at a prohibitive prices. In many
cases equipment from the 1980's and prior has no real commercial value
for current product development due to the rapid advancement of
electronics technology so many of these instruments fall into amateur
radio operator or hobbyist hands.

I was once given a HP 200CD Audio Oscillator when the company I worked
for bought a brand new HP204C. I was still in High School. I studied
the
manual for that 200CD and William Reddington Hewlett's masters thesis
on
that classic design. Even today I believe I could draw that schematic
by
heart! I still have that oscillator today and it still works!

Personally, I can say without a doubt, I have learned more about real
electronics from using and repairing HP/Agilent equipment than I did
in
the all years I spent in engineering school. I have spent more hours
than I can count working on nearly every instrument HP made from the
1950's through the 1990's.

It would be a great gesture for HP/Agilent to follow the lead of their
contemporary Tektronix and grant a release to the public domain of all
manuals for products that are no longer in production or under
support.

I believe that William R. Hewlett and David Packard would have wanted
the great legacy of their company to live on through the conversion of
these documents to electronic format for use as a reference for the
current and future generations of electrical engineers and radio
amateurs alike.

I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your busy
schedule
to read my letter and I hope that you will take my comments into
consideration.

With best regards,

Sam Reaves
W3OHM

AND THE REPLY BELOW

Hello Mr. Reaves,

I believe this problem has been resolved and old HP manuals will return
to the BAMA site. I really
appreciate your contacting us and expressing the importance of having
old manuals available. The
issue is now better understood by the people who create out
intellectual property policies. It has
also been very educational for marketing people like myself. So again
thanks for your feedback.

Mike Gallagher
Information Distribution Services Manager
Logged

I'd rather be anatomically correct than politically correct!
W4LTM
Guest
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2005, 09:12:42 AM »

Very well written indeed.
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

AMfone - Dedicated to Amplitude Modulation on the Amateur Radio Bands
 AMfone © 2001-2015
Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines
Page created in 0.05 seconds with 18 queries.