Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Evan Koblentz via cctalk]

This article has more details about the archive situation and, more 
important, it has a comment from HP at the end.


https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/tech-history/silicon-revolution/loss-of-hewlettpackard-archive-a-wakeup-call-for-computer-historians

Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Evan Koblentz via cctalk]

It seems with the internet that crowd-sourcing is way of resourcing things. 
Maybe we (that's us on this list) need to apply this concept to the scanning 
and archiving and retention of any paper based repositories that still exist. 
I'll call it crowd-scanning for the time being.


Unfortunately, it sounds like much of what was lost is internal HP 
documentation, no way to replace that.

RE: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Tom Gardner via cctalk]

Apparently some of Hewlett's papers went to Stanford
"Two new collections open for research: Helen and Newton Harrison & William 
Hewlett"
http://library.stanford.edu/blogs/special-collections-unbound/2016/04/two-new-collections-open-research-helen-and-newton
 

Tom

-Original Message-
From: Ed Sharpe [mailto:couryho...@aol.com] 
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:19 PM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and 
David Packard

Karen Lewis felt Stanford  was the place they should go... 

ed#

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

On Sunday, October 29, 2017 Steven M Jones via cctalk  
wrote:
General comment to several earlier replies re: Bitsavers-type efforts.

The tragedy here is not that some copies of uncommon but otherwise extant 
product documentation were lost. From the description, there were a large 
number of unique, individual documents created by significant historical 
figures. Fair bet that many of these didn't exist anywhere else. Certainly not 
if it included drafts of speeches and correspondence, as well as the final 
copy, etc.

A better question (not that it does any good to ask it now) is why this stuff 
wasn't in the hands of university conservators or similar. I love bitsavers and 
warchive.org, but this is a level beyond what they typically focus on. (And to 
be sure, CHM would have at least kept such artifacts safe even if they couldn't 
do anything with them for a few
years/decades.)

Sigh. And I don't really mean to criticize anybody at Keysight, humans are 
generally bad at recognizing and planning for this kind of contingency - and 
I'm probably worst than most...

--S.

Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Ed Sharpe via cctalk]

Karen Lewis felt Stanford  was the place they should go... 

ed#

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

On Sunday, October 29, 2017 Steven M Jones via cctalk  
wrote:
General comment to several earlier replies re: Bitsavers-type efforts.

The tragedy here is not that some copies of uncommon but otherwise
extant product documentation were lost. From the description, there were
a large number of unique, individual documents created by significant
historical figures. Fair bet that many of these didn't exist anywhere
else. Certainly not if it included drafts of speeches and
correspondence, as well as the final copy, etc.

A better question (not that it does any good to ask it now) is why this
stuff wasn't in the hands of university conservators or similar. I love
bitsavers and warchive.org, but this is a level beyond what they
typically focus on. (And to be sure, CHM would have at least kept such
artifacts safe even if they couldn't do anything with them for a few
years/decades.)

Sigh. And I don't really mean to criticize anybody at Keysight, humans
are generally bad at recognizing and planning for this kind of
contingency - and I'm probably worst than most...

--S.

Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Steven M Jones via cctalk]

General comment to several earlier replies re: Bitsavers-type efforts.

The tragedy here is not that some copies of uncommon but otherwise
extant product documentation were lost. From the description, there were
a large number of unique, individual documents created by significant
historical figures. Fair bet that many of these didn't exist anywhere
else. Certainly not if it included drafts of speeches and
correspondence, as well as the final copy, etc.

A better question (not that it does any good to ask it now) is why this
stuff wasn't in the hands of university conservators or similar. I love
bitsavers and warchive.org, but this is a level beyond what they
typically focus on. (And to be sure, CHM would have at least kept such
artifacts safe even if they couldn't do anything with them for a few
years/decades.)

Sigh. And I don't really mean to criticize anybody at Keysight, humans
are generally bad at recognizing and planning for this kind of
contingency - and I'm probably worst than most...

--S.

RE: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Kevin Parker via cctalk]

Sorry wasn't aware of the operational aspects of bitsavers or how stuff finds 
it's a way in there (although I just had a good read of it all).

But having said that, it looks like this collection perished without finding 
its way to bitsavers so it’s not so much where its stored  - it’s the act of 
collecting the paper and scanning it in. 

If I scan stuff can I add it or get it added to BitSavers  - I'm not sure 
because there's a notice on their web site (and I'm certainly not decrying 
their efforts - its highly valued resource intensive work):

"Due to the current several year backlog of documents to process, we are not 
actively soliciting additional paper or scans to add to the collection"

(Not sure if I can do anything but I might send them an offer of help.)


Kevin Parker



-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Al Kossow via 
cctalk
Sent: Monday, 30 October 2017 11:14
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and 
David Packard



On 10/29/17 4:59 PM, Kevin Parker via cctalk wrote:
> Maybe we (that's us on this list) need to apply this concept to the scanning 
> and archiving and retention of any paper based repositories that still exist.

What a brilliant idea. We could call it "bitsavers"!

Re: Post scanned documents to multiple sites - Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Toby Thain via cctalk]

On 2017-10-29 8:26 PM, Peter Cetinski wrote:
> I suggest creating a free github.com  account with a
> public repository.  This way whenever someone forks or clones the repo
> they get a full local copy with one command...”git clone”.  
> 
> Get enough people and you’ll never worry about losing the archive and
> it’s all for free.  If github goes away everyone still has a complete
> copy which  can be uploaded to the next great service that comes along.

Only if they had the foresight both to clone it, and keep it up to date,
meaning they need all the resources/space/bandwidth to do so (and then
it would STILL be a private, disconnected copy; so no use to anyone ELSE).

--Toby

>  It’s a semi-decentralized and distributed archive.
> 
> We are doing this with the Model II archive
> at https://github.com/pski/model2archive

Re: Post scanned documents to multiple sites - Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Peter Cetinski via cctalk]

I suggest creating a free github.com account with a public repository.  This 
way whenever someone forks or clones the repo they get a full local copy with 
one command...”git clone”.  

Get enough people and you’ll never worry about losing the archive and it’s all 
for free.  If github goes away everyone still has a complete copy which  can be 
uploaded to the next great service that comes along.  It’s a semi-decentralized 
and distributed archive.

We are doing this with the Model II archive at 
https://github.com/pski/model2archive

Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 10/29/17 4:59 PM, Kevin Parker via cctalk wrote:
> Maybe we (that's us on this list) need to apply this concept to the scanning 
> and archiving and retention of any paper based repositories that still exist.

What a brilliant idea. We could call it "bitsavers"!

Post scanned documents to multiple sites - Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Toby Thain via cctalk]

On 2017-10-29 7:48 PM, David Collins via cctalk wrote:
> Completely agree. I’m in the process of scanning additional product manuals 
> that haven’t made it into the HP Computer Museum’s site yet. 
> 
> Any of us with websites could have some reason to stop doing this good work 
> at any time so duplicated info across a few sites is an important risk 
> reduction item!

+100

However I'm only aware of one site that currently accepts scanned
submissions: Internet Archive.

If there are any others please mention.

--Toby


> 
> David Collins
> HP Computer Museum
> 
>> On 30 Oct 2017, at 8:43 am, Ed via cctalk  wrote:
>>
>>
>> The Tubbs fire  consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and 
>> David Packard, the tech  pioneers who in 1938 formed an electronics company 
>> in a 
>> Palo Alto garage with  $538 in cash. 
>> More  than 100 boxes of the two men’s writings, correspondence, speeches 
>> and other  items were contained in one of two modular buildings that burned 
>> to 
>> the ground  at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. 
>> Keysight, the  world’s largest electronics measurement company, traces its 
>> roots to HP and  acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split 
>> from 
>> Agilent  Technologies — itself an HP spinoff. 
>>
>> http://bit.ly/2yd6Z2G 
>> (My added note)   And this is  why I continue to stress  multiple 
>> caches of  copies/scans of historical material... and sad... as in this  
>> case 
>> here is  someone that  could have footed the bill and not missed the  money 
>> to  
>> do it.  
>> Ed#  Archivist  for SMECC
> 

RE: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Kevin Parker via cctalk]

Very sad when I hear stories like this and I'm not precluding the people who 
were directly affected by this - I'm located in Australia and while bushfires 
are a fact of life here, they're still devastating.

Just going to toss an idea out there - have no idea how this might work but 
thought I'd toss it out there.

It seems with the internet that crowd-sourcing is way of resourcing things. 
Maybe we (that's us on this list) need to apply this concept to the scanning 
and archiving and retention of any paper based repositories that still exist. 
I'll call it crowd-scanning for the time being.


Kevin Parker


-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ed via cctalk
Sent: Monday, 30 October 2017 08:44
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and 
David Packard

 
The Tubbs fire  consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David 
Packard, the tech  pioneers who in 1938 formed an electronics company in a Palo 
Alto garage with  $538 in cash. 
More  than 100 boxes of the two men’s writings, correspondence, speeches and 
other  items were contained in one of two modular buildings that burned to the 
ground  at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. 
Keysight, the  world’s largest electronics measurement company, traces its 
roots to HP and  acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split from 
Agilent  Technologies — itself an HP spinoff. 

http://bit.ly/2yd6Z2G 
(My added note)   And this is  why I continue to stress  multiple 
caches of  copies/scans of historical material... and sad... as in this  case 
here is  someone that  could have footed the bill and not missed the  money to 
do it.  
Ed#  Archivist  for SMECC

Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[David Collins via cctalk]

Completely agree. I’m in the process of scanning additional product manuals 
that haven’t made it into the HP Computer Museum’s site yet. 

Any of us with websites could have some reason to stop doing this good work at 
any time so duplicated info across a few sites is an important risk reduction 
item!

David Collins
HP Computer Museum

> On 30 Oct 2017, at 8:43 am, Ed via cctalk  wrote:
> 
> 
> The Tubbs fire  consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and 
> David Packard, the tech  pioneers who in 1938 formed an electronics company 
> in a 
> Palo Alto garage with  $538 in cash. 
> More  than 100 boxes of the two men’s writings, correspondence, speeches 
> and other  items were contained in one of two modular buildings that burned 
> to 
> the ground  at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. 
> Keysight, the  world’s largest electronics measurement company, traces its 
> roots to HP and  acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split 
> from 
> Agilent  Technologies — itself an HP spinoff. 
> 
> http://bit.ly/2yd6Z2G 
> (My added note)   And this is  why I continue to stress  multiple 
> caches of  copies/scans of historical material... and sad... as in this  case 
> here is  someone that  could have footed the bill and not missed the  money 
> to  
> do it.  
> Ed#  Archivist  for SMECC

Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Ed via cctalk]

 
The Tubbs fire  consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and 
David Packard, the tech  pioneers who in 1938 formed an electronics company in 
a 
Palo Alto garage with  $538 in cash. 
More  than 100 boxes of the two men’s writings, correspondence, speeches 
and other  items were contained in one of two modular buildings that burned to 
the ground  at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. 
Keysight, the  world’s largest electronics measurement company, traces its 
roots to HP and  acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split from 
Agilent  Technologies — itself an HP spinoff. 

http://bit.ly/2yd6Z2G 
(My added note)   And this is  why I continue to stress  multiple 
caches of  copies/scans of historical material... and sad... as in this  case 
here is  someone that  could have footed the bill and not missed the  money to  
do it.  
Ed#  Archivist  for SMECC