Page 62 - Analog Circuit Design Art, Science, and Personalities

Jim Williams

7. Max Wien, Mr. Hewlett,

and a Rainy Sunday Afternoon

One rainy Sunday afternoon, 1 found myself with nothing much to do. I've always
treasured rainy Sundays that come supplied with spare time. With my first child on
the way, I've taken a particular devotion to them lately. So 1 wandered off to my lab
(no true home is complete without a lab).
1 surveyed several breadboards in various states of inexplicable nonfunction and
some newly acquired power transistors that needed putting away. Neither option
offered irresistibly alluring possibilities. My atlention drifted. softly coming to rest
on the instrument storage area. On the left side of the third shelf sat a Hewlett-
Packard serics 200 oscillator. (No lab is complete without an HP series 200 oscillator.,
see Figure 7- 1 .)
The NP 20(!, directly descended from HP cofounder William R. Hewlett's
master's degree thesis. is not simply a great instrument. Nor was it simply mighty
HP's first product.' This machine is history. It provided a direction, methods, and
standards that have been rerlected in HP products to this day. There is a fundamental
honesty aboilt the thing, a sense of trustworthiness and integrity. The little box is a
remarkable amalgam of elegant theoretical ideas. inspired design, careful engincer-
ing, dedicated execution, and capitalism. It answered a market need with a superior
solution. 'The contribution was genuine, with the rewards evenly divided between
Hewlctt-Packard and its customers. The HP 200 is the way mother said things are
supposcrl to be--the good guys won and nobody lost.
Digging in tlic lab library (no lab is complete without a library), I found my copy
of William Redington Hewlett's 1939 Stanford thesis, "A New Type Resistance-
Capacity Oscillator" (no lab library is complete without a copy).
Hcwlett concisely stated the thesis objective (aside from graduating):

Hewlett's o5cillator used a resonant RC network originated by Max Wicn in 189 1
(see thc rcfcrenccs at the end of this chapter). Wicn had no source of electronic gain

1. Also. incidentally. cisil?. their I(!npest-lived product. The tIP 200 series was sold by Hcm Ictl-Packarc1
until the mid- 1080s. a production lifctime ol almost SO ycxs.

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