Outdoor Microwave Test Courtesy of Hewlett Packard Company

Microwave at HP

The photo on the left shows in the foreground, some of HP's Microwave celebrities of the 40s and 50s, from left to right:
W.Bruce Wholey Engineering Manager of the Microwave and Signal Generator Division.
E.F. Barnet Designer of a large part of the Waveguide Product Line.
Art Fong Designer of the 803A VHF impedance bridge and later in the early 60s, product manager of the Spectrum Analyzer Division.
Bill Hewlett is standing in the foreground on the right.

Most of the original Microwave team came from the MIT Radiation Laboratory created by the US government during World War II.

Right Page of the 1950 Publicity reconstructed with pieces of the collection: Upper left HP 608A - Upper right HP 610B Lower left HP 614A - Lower right HP 616A

10 to 7600 Mc Coverage

The November, 1950, Ads shown above argues that:

Now —hp— offers the world's broadest, easiest-to-use line of VHF, UHF and SHF signal generators. These are precision instruments supplying accurately known frequencies up to 7,600 mc. They are deliberately designed for utmost convenience and accuracy in making all kinds of measurements including: receiver sensitivity, selectivity or rejection; signal-noise ratio, conversion gain, SWR, antenna gain, transmission line characteristics ; and for driving bridges, slotted lines, filter networks, etc.

The listed instruments are:

• HP 618A - 3800 to 7200 mc
• HP 616A - 1800 to 4000 mc
• HP 614A - 800 to 2100 mc
• HP 610B - 450 to 1200 mc
• HP 608A - 10 to 500 mc

All these generators have variable output level from
0.1 µV to about 200 mV (1 milliwatt) into 50 Ohm.

HP 624C SHF Test Set

SHF Test Sets

Also introduced during the fifties and built using the same techniques, a number of microwave test sets were designed for specific markets needs. Basically, these sets were signal generators with added circuitry for measuring external power levels and external frequency.

One of the sets, the model 624A, covers a range from 8500 to 10,000 mc. It is especially useful in testing radar transmitters and receivers, and includes a versatile pulser to facilitate such testing.

The model 623B has been designed for testing SHF relay stations such as are used in video and communications work. It can be obtained for any one of six frequency bands, each about 300 mc wide and overlapping from 5925 to 7725 mc.

These test sets can be consider as another "All tools in one box" approach, like was the 650A and 205AG in the audio spectrum.
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