HP and the Surveying industry

[Sylvain Cote]

About a year ago I was researching the web for 41 stuff on Surveying.
I found several interesting pieces of informations but one of them was standing out
and I just realized that I have never posted the link here.

The article relate the history of the relations between the HP calculators division,
third party manufacturers and the surveying industry. Very interesting reading ...

So here it is: The End of An Era, POB Magazine, October 1, 2004.

Have a great reading ...

Sylvain

PS: I have extracted the companies and the peoples mentioned in the article.

Companies
The Lietz Co. sold to Sokkia (Sokkisha, Japan) sold to Topcon (Japan)
Datacom Software Research (DSR), New Zealand morphed to Trimble (New Zealand)
Surveyors Module Inc. (SMI, Tennessee, USA)
Hayes Instrument Co. (USA)
Firmware Specialists Inc. (FSI, Corvallis, Oregon, USA)
Corvallis Microtechnology (CMT, 1984, Corvallis, Oregon, USA)
Tripod Data Systems (TDS, 1987, Corvallis, Oregon, USA)

Peoples (Lietz, Sokkia & DSR)
Bob Martin, vice president-products for Lietz,
Stanley Trent, software developper for The Lietz Co.
Mike Beckingham, managing director of Sokkia's Australian
Alan Townsend, manager of Datacom Software Research, New Zealand

Peoples (SMI, Hayes, FSI, TDS, CMT)
Stanley Trent, created the company Surveyors Module Inc. (SMI)
Harold Hayes, created the company Hayes Instrument Co. (investor in SMI)
Dave Conklin, co-founder of Firmware Specialists (ex HP)
Steve Chou, co-founder of Firmware Specialists (ex HP)
David Lin, co-founder (1984) of CMT (ex HP)
Bernie Musch, co-founder (1987) of Tripod Data Systems (ex HP)
Steve Chou, co-founder (1987) of Tripod Data Systems (ex HP)

[Jake Schwartz]

(10-21-2015 03:58 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote:  So here it is: The End of An Era, POB Magazine, October 1, 2004.

Have a great reading ...

Sylvain

It is interesting that at the time this article was written, the HP49g was already 5 years old and the 49g+ was one year old. And yet I couldn't find any reference to the fact that HP had not given up on graphing calculators...this article seems to imply that the 48 was the end of high-end calc development at HP. And only the following year, Tim Wessman would demonstrate (at the HHC2005 conference in Chicago) the sophisticated surveying equipment based on the 49G+ that he and John Evers had developed.

Jake

[RMollov]

(10-21-2015 03:10 PM)Jake Schwartz Wrote:  It is interesting that at the time this article was written, the HP49g was already 5 years old and the 49g+ was one year old. And yet I couldn't find any reference to the fact that HP had not given up on graphing calculators...this article seems to imply that the 48 was the end of high-end calc development at HP. And only the following year, Tim Wessman would demonstrate (at the HHC2005 conference in Chicago) the sophisticated surveying equipment based on the 49G+ that he and John Evers had developed.

Jake

Actually I share the spirit of the article. As a (back then) practising surveyor I never took seriously HP49 and its family after. Even today HP48 is the calculator of choice used by most surveyors I know.

BTW all those Sokkisha electronic field books are long since forgotten unlike the great HP48 which is sought after and regarded as a treasure if found.

Regards,

[Han]

(10-22-2015 02:32 AM)RMollov Wrote:  

(10-21-2015 03:10 PM)Jake Schwartz Wrote:  It is interesting that at the time this article was written, the HP49g was already 5 years old and the 49g+ was one year old. And yet I couldn't find any reference to the fact that HP had not given up on graphing calculators...this article seems to imply that the 48 was the end of high-end calc development at HP. And only the following year, Tim Wessman would demonstrate (at the HHC2005 conference in Chicago) the sophisticated surveying equipment based on the 49G+ that he and John Evers had developed.

Jake

Actually I share the spirit of the article. As a (back then) practising surveyor I never took seriously HP49 and its family after. Even today HP48 is the calculator of choice used by most surveyors I know.

BTW all those Sokkisha electronic field books are long since forgotten unlike the great HP48 which is sought after and regarded as a treasure if found.

Regards,

For surveyors, the HP49 was a step back with respect to surveying. The lack of expansion cards of any sort meant that all that data had to fit in the built-in memory, and then be transferred over by wire. Moreover, any software written for the HP49 could not be protected in the same sense that proprietary software was "protected" on the HP48 series in the form of a ROM card.

When the HP49G+ came out, the SD card slot was a great feature, but the keyboard pretty much rendered the HP49G+ quite useless. Not to mention the non-standard RS232 port that a lot of surveying devices from an older generation still needed. By the time the HP50G came out, there had already been far too many years in between and the surveying industry had moved on.