"In September I964, we began to develop an automatic controller for
measurement systems with Kay Magleby heading the team. This was to become our
first minicomputer, the Model 21116. Although the work had started in our
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, we acquired a small computer group from Union
Carbide to help staff the effort. This was the nucleus of our early computer
division in Cupertino, not far from Palo Alto.

"We soon found that we were selling more 2116s as stand-alone minicomputers
than as controllers in automatic measurement systems. Still, we were slow to
get the message. An example of our cautious approach to computers was the way
we handled a promising project, code-named Omega. Initiated by our people in
Cupertino,  Omega was what would have been, in the early 1970s, the world's
first thirty-two-bit computer. The term thirty-two-bit refers to the word
length used in the computer data format and to the width of the parallel
buses  used  to  transport  data  in  the  machine. Initially, a word length
of eight bits was common. In 1968, the standard had become sixteen bits. A
thirty-two-bit machine would require more hardware but would have been twice
as fast and would directly access thousands of times more memory.

"The prospect of producing such a fast and powerful computer had created
tremendous enthusiasm among our Cupertino people, and they soon had Omega at
the prototype stage. By that time, however, there had been increasing
top-management concern about the scope of the project. It clearly represented
a departure from HP's basic principles. It was expensive. We would have to
take on debt to fund it, and rather than building on existing HP strengths,
the project required expertise and capabilities we did not have at the time,
such as an electronic data-processing center, large-business processing
applications, twenty-four-hour service, plus leasing and sales operations.
More important was the fact that the thirty-two-bit computer project
presented a new and formidable marketing challenge. It would take us into
unfamiliar commercial markets and into direct competition with IBM's
mainframe business. Bill Hewlett's sage advice had always been, "Don't try to
take a fortified hill, especially if the army on top is bigger than your
own." Omega was a case in point. The project was canceled, a decision that
was difficult and controversial.

"The cancellation of Omega was especially disappointing to our Cupertino
people. The fellow who had been running the project left the division (and,
soon afterward, the company). Several people who remained took to wearing
black-velvet armbands, in mourning for the canceled project. Canceled it may
have been . . . but not abandoned! It turned out that a few of the Omega
enthusiasts kept the project hidden in a back room of the lab and were still
working on it. At that point several key managers and engineers took another
look at the project. They concluded that it embodied some good ideas in terms
of computer architecture and, if we could scale it back to a sixteen-bit
machine and simplify the operating system, we might have a promising product.
So the Omega development program was redirected and renamed "Alpha." The
result was a sophisticated, low-cost, sixteen-bit machine for processing
small to medium-sized on-line business transactions. Alpha became HPs first
general-purpose computer, introduced in 1972 as the HP3000. The HP3000, with
its MPE operating system, is one of the computer industry's most enduring
success stories. More than twenty years after its introduction, its
descendant machines are just now entering their obsolescent phase."

     --David Packard, 1995, "The HP Way", pp. 102-104

The moral of this story is that if enough managers get to take enough pot
shots at a system, you *can* kill it.

Maybe.

Wirt Atmar

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