Jim Adney wrote:

. . .

[Good comments]

. . .

Yes, I own several old Tek scopes. I consider myself a Tek youngster
as I've only been using them for about 35 years. I've got a nice new
one at work that only seems to weigh a couple of pounds and still does
300MHz. It takes me 20 minutes to figure it out every time I turn it
on, but I assume that's just because I don't turn it on frequently
enough.

There's another reason.

For a long time, scopes were designed by engineers who used scopes
daily, as their main tool. It wasn't any trick at all for them to select
features that were useful, and operation that was intuitive. These days,
the features are decided mainly by marketers and upper level managers,
few of whom ever spent any time actually using a scope. They're
implemented by software engineers, most of whom don't have the slightest
idea what a scope does or how to use one. Consequently, we can look
forward to a future of instruments that will be harder and harder to use
and understand, and won't have the feature set the user really needs.

I'll give you just one example, from the development of one of the first
highly digital lines of scopes. A mock-up had been created out of some
computer pieces, a display unit, and bits of this and that, so the
engineers could get a sense of how the new instrument was to use. I sat
down at the bench, and the first thing I did was to adjust the
horizontal position. I turned the (only) knob clockwise, and the trace
moved to the left. "Oh," I said to the software engineer who had
implemented most of the functions, "I see you've got that backward, but
that's easy enough to fix." "No," he said, "that's how I intended it to
work. It's logical: the delay increases when you turn the knob
clockwise." Pointing out to him that, logical or not, it would throw a
barrier in the way of every person who ever used the instrument, had
absolutely no effect on his certainty that his way was best(*). (And,
yes, I would have made the exact same argument that turning the knob to
the right *should* move the display to the left if the instrument were a
spectrum analyzer.) In this case, the project manager was a former
analog engineer, and he overruled the software engineer. But these days,
most management positions are filled with people who have seldom or
never actually used a scope, so more and more counter-intuitive, clumsy,
and useless features are showing up. Get used to it.

(*) In the '60's, when I was a technician, every place I went would have
a bunch of Tek scopes and one or two HPs. The HPs were just fine, except
that HP had insisted on making their own user interface. Where a Tek
scope would use a knob, they'd use buttons, and so forth, and the
controls were all put in different spots. We'd swear if we got stuck
with using one of the HPs, since it would take so long to figure out
where the needed control was and which way to turn it or which button to
push. So no one ever recommended buying an HP -- we all wanted Tek
scopes -- and as much due to familiarity as anything else. Then the
Japanese scopes came on the market. Y'know what? The knobs and other
controls were not only in exactly the same places as on Tek scopes, they
were even the same shape and color. We could pick one up and begin using
it right away. Y'know what else? Tek took a real beating from the
Japanese scopes, way worse than they ever did from HP.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL
Tek, 1974-80, 1984-95

There's another reason.

For a long time, scopes were designed by engineers who used scopes
daily, as their main tool. It wasn't any trick at all for them to select
features that were useful, and operation that was intuitive. These days,
the features are decided mainly by marketers and upper level managers,
few of whom ever spent any time actually using a scope. They're
implemented by software engineers, most of whom don't have the slightest
idea what a scope does or how to use one. Consequently, we can look
forward to a future of instruments that will be harder and harder to use
and understand, and won't have the feature set the user really needs.

I'll give you just one example, from the development of one of the first
highly digital lines of scopes. A mock-up had been created out of some
computer pieces, a display unit, and bits of this and that, so the
engineers could get a sense of how the new instrument was to use. I sat
down at the bench, and the first thing I did was to adjust the
horizontal position. I turned the (only) knob clockwise, and the trace
moved to the left. "Oh," I said to the software engineer who had
implemented most of the functions, "I see you've got that backward, but
that's easy enough to fix." "No," he said, "that's how I intended it to
work. It's logical: the delay increases when you turn the knob
clockwise." Pointing out to him that, logical or not, it would throw a
barrier in the way of every person who ever used the instrument, had
absolutely no effect on his certainty that his way was best(*). (And,
yes, I would have made the exact same argument that turning the knob to
the right *should* move the display to the left if the instrument were a
spectrum analyzer.) In this case, the project manager was a former
analog engineer, and he overruled the software engineer. But these days,
most management positions are filled with people who have seldom or
never actually used a scope, so more and more counter-intuitive, clumsy,
and useless features are showing up. Get used to it.

(*) In the '60's, when I was a technician, every place I went would have
a bunch of Tek scopes and one or two HPs. The HPs were just fine, except
that HP had insisted on making their own user interface. Where a Tek
scope would use a knob, they'd use buttons, and so forth, and the
controls were all put in different spots. We'd swear if we got stuck
with using one of the HPs, since it would take so long to figure out
where the needed control was and which way to turn it or which button to
push. So no one ever recommended buying an HP -- we all wanted Tek
scopes -- and as much due to familiarity as anything else. Then the
Japanese scopes came on the market. Y'know what? The knobs and other
controls were not only in exactly the same places as on Tek scopes, they
were even the same shape and color. We could pick one up and begin using
it right away. Y'know what else? Tek took a real beating from the
Japanese scopes, way worse than they ever did from HP.
===================
Roy , Tnx for your interesting comments.
What surprises me is that ,as you highlighted , ergonomics no longer seem
to be important in scope development.
Whereas in other industrial activities and product design ,industrial
designers pay a lot of attention to ergonomics.
Perhaps it is that modern scopes (and similar equipment) are designed by
nerds for nerds.
It also adds to the perception that one has to be a 'specialist' to operate
and use this type of equipment ,which I fear is an ever increasing element
of modern marketing . A 'KISS' approach apparently does bring in the $$$.

Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH

Roy Lewallen wrote:
These days, the features are decided mainly by marketers and upper
level managers, few of whom ever spent any time actually using a scope.

An un-named source working for H-P/ Agilent totally agrees with that!

He also added:
"The founder of Tek invented the triggered timebase and offered it to
Hewlett-Packard. Bill and Dave saw the value but were committed to doing
other things for their near future and suggested he start his own firm,
giving him some advice along the way."



--
73 from Ian G3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
Editor, 'The VHF/UHF DX Book'
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek

In article , "Ian White, G3SEK"
writes:

Roy Lewallen wrote:
These days, the features are decided mainly by marketers and upper
level managers, few of whom ever spent any time actually using a scope.

An un-named source working for H-P/ Agilent totally agrees with that!

He also added:
"The founder of Tek invented the triggered timebase and offered it to
Hewlett-Packard. Bill and Dave saw the value but were committed to doing
other things for their near future and suggested he start his own firm,
giving him some advice along the way."

Well, I have no "un-named" sources, only the named ones. For two
interviews with Howard Vollum, co-founder of Tektronix, try:

http://www.infoage.org/oh-howard-vollum.html

Infoage is concentrating on the Signal Corps labs, most notably
Camp Evans, NJ (outside of Fort Monmouth) which became the
"Evans Laboratories," an adjunct of Fort Monmouth (along with
Coles and Squires labs outside of the Fort in the 1950s). Vollum
spent some service time at Camp Evans after overseas work on
radar in Great Britain. Vollum's interviews consist of one in 1955
and another in 1980.

There's some more at:

http://www.ohsu.edu/vollum/about.htm

There's also archive material from EE Times and several Tektronix
collector's web pages.

I don't find any reference to Hewlett-Packard, but more on the rivalry
with Allen B. DuMont and his oscilloscope company.

My own acquaintence is first with the 511AD model in 1954 while in
U.S. Army and becoming a supervisor on microwave radio relay
equipment. As far as I can recall, the sweep trigger of the 511 is
little more than a Schmitt Trigger circuit which was rather common
in pulse circuitry of the 50s. All of the first Tektronix scopes had
regulated power supplies which enabled the stability of the vertical
sweep to give true volts-per-graticule-marking information and for the
sweep rate to be calibrated with some precision. Whether in service
and maintenance or engineering design, the true information on the
trace is more important than whether or not the sweep trigger is
fancy (which it was, again, stable to use repeatedly thanks to the
regulated HV supplies). Add to that the "unblanking" of the CRT
while in sweep (blank screen during retrace) and the display is
quite natural and easy to use.

Having used a number of different instruments and scopes, I can't
agree with the "standard control arrangement" comments. Each
and every instrument has, to me, ALWAYS had some differences
which required attention to the bell and whistle control lay-outs.
This got worse by the 1970s when more and more function controls
were added to the front panels and the sizes of controls got smaller
and smaller. My fingers remained the same size...it got ridiculous
with the pointy little "keys" of the optional 7000 series (?) plug-in
for writing things on the CRT face...and the plug-in "spectrum
analyzer" modules from a company that Tektronix acquired.

Given the rather totally different function controls of today's DSOs,
it boils down to everyone needing to understand their instruments
FIRST before trying to use them. Ain't no such thing as "standard
control arrangements" when the controls don't apply to newer
functions.

Len Anderson
retired (from regular hours) electronic engineer person

In article , "Ian White, G3SEK"
writes:

Roy Lewallen wrote:
These days, the features are decided mainly by marketers and upper
level managers, few of whom ever spent any time actually using a scope.

An un-named source working for H-P/ Agilent totally agrees with that!

He also added:
"The founder of Tek invented the triggered timebase and offered it to
Hewlett-Packard. Bill and Dave saw the value but were committed to doing
other things for their near future and suggested he start his own firm,
giving him some advice along the way."

Well, I have no "un-named" sources, only the named ones. For two
interviews with Howard Vollum, co-founder of Tektronix, try:

http://www.infoage.org/oh-howard-vollum.html

Infoage is concentrating on the Signal Corps labs, most notably
Camp Evans, NJ (outside of Fort Monmouth) which became the
"Evans Laboratories," an adjunct of Fort Monmouth (along with
Coles and Squires labs outside of the Fort in the 1950s). Vollum
spent some service time at Camp Evans after overseas work on
radar in Great Britain. Vollum's interviews consist of one in 1955
and another in 1980.

There's some more at:

http://www.ohsu.edu/vollum/about.htm

There's also archive material from EE Times and several Tektronix
collector's web pages.

I don't find any reference to Hewlett-Packard, but more on the rivalry
with Allen B. DuMont and his oscilloscope company.

My own acquaintence is first with the 511AD model in 1954 while in
U.S. Army and becoming a supervisor on microwave radio relay
equipment. As far as I can recall, the sweep trigger of the 511 is
little more than a Schmitt Trigger circuit which was rather common
in pulse circuitry of the 50s. All of the first Tektronix scopes had
regulated power supplies which enabled the stability of the vertical
sweep to give true volts-per-graticule-marking information and for the
sweep rate to be calibrated with some precision. Whether in service
and maintenance or engineering design, the true information on the
trace is more important than whether or not the sweep trigger is
fancy (which it was, again, stable to use repeatedly thanks to the
regulated HV supplies). Add to that the "unblanking" of the CRT
while in sweep (blank screen during retrace) and the display is
quite natural and easy to use.

Having used a number of different instruments and scopes, I can't
agree with the "standard control arrangement" comments. Each
and every instrument has, to me, ALWAYS had some differences
which required attention to the bell and whistle control lay-outs.
This got worse by the 1970s when more and more function controls
were added to the front panels and the sizes of controls got smaller
and smaller. My fingers remained the same size...it got ridiculous
with the pointy little "keys" of the optional 7000 series (?) plug-in
for writing things on the CRT face...and the plug-in "spectrum
analyzer" modules from a company that Tektronix acquired.

Given the rather totally different function controls of today's DSOs,
it boils down to everyone needing to understand their instruments
FIRST before trying to use them. Ain't no such thing as "standard
control arrangements" when the controls don't apply to newer
functions.

Len Anderson
retired (from regular hours) electronic engineer person

There's another reason.

For a long time, scopes were designed by engineers who used scopes
daily, as their main tool. It wasn't any trick at all for them to select
features that were useful, and operation that was intuitive. These days,
the features are decided mainly by marketers and upper level managers,
few of whom ever spent any time actually using a scope. They're
implemented by software engineers, most of whom don't have the slightest
idea what a scope does or how to use one. Consequently, we can look
forward to a future of instruments that will be harder and harder to use
and understand, and won't have the feature set the user really needs.

I'll give you just one example, from the development of one of the first
highly digital lines of scopes. A mock-up had been created out of some
computer pieces, a display unit, and bits of this and that, so the
engineers could get a sense of how the new instrument was to use. I sat
down at the bench, and the first thing I did was to adjust the
horizontal position. I turned the (only) knob clockwise, and the trace
moved to the left. "Oh," I said to the software engineer who had
implemented most of the functions, "I see you've got that backward, but
that's easy enough to fix." "No," he said, "that's how I intended it to
work. It's logical: the delay increases when you turn the knob
clockwise." Pointing out to him that, logical or not, it would throw a
barrier in the way of every person who ever used the instrument, had
absolutely no effect on his certainty that his way was best(*). (And,
yes, I would have made the exact same argument that turning the knob to
the right *should* move the display to the left if the instrument were a
spectrum analyzer.) In this case, the project manager was a former
analog engineer, and he overruled the software engineer. But these days,
most management positions are filled with people who have seldom or
never actually used a scope, so more and more counter-intuitive, clumsy,
and useless features are showing up. Get used to it.

(*) In the '60's, when I was a technician, every place I went would have
a bunch of Tek scopes and one or two HPs. The HPs were just fine, except
that HP had insisted on making their own user interface. Where a Tek
scope would use a knob, they'd use buttons, and so forth, and the
controls were all put in different spots. We'd swear if we got stuck
with using one of the HPs, since it would take so long to figure out
where the needed control was and which way to turn it or which button to
push. So no one ever recommended buying an HP -- we all wanted Tek
scopes -- and as much due to familiarity as anything else. Then the
Japanese scopes came on the market. Y'know what? The knobs and other
controls were not only in exactly the same places as on Tek scopes, they
were even the same shape and color. We could pick one up and begin using
it right away. Y'know what else? Tek took a real beating from the
Japanese scopes, way worse than they ever did from HP.
===================
Roy , Tnx for your interesting comments.
What surprises me is that ,as you highlighted , ergonomics no longer seem
to be important in scope development.
Whereas in other industrial activities and product design ,industrial
designers pay a lot of attention to ergonomics.
Perhaps it is that modern scopes (and similar equipment) are designed by
nerds for nerds.
It also adds to the perception that one has to be a 'specialist' to operate
and use this type of equipment ,which I fear is an ever increasing element
of modern marketing . A 'KISS' approach apparently does bring in the $$$.

Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH

Roy Lewallen wrote:
These days, the features are decided mainly by marketers and upper
level managers, few of whom ever spent any time actually using a scope.

An un-named source working for H-P/ Agilent totally agrees with that!

He also added:
"The founder of Tek invented the triggered timebase and offered it to
Hewlett-Packard. Bill and Dave saw the value but were committed to doing
other things for their near future and suggested he start his own firm,
giving him some advice along the way."



--
73 from Ian G3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
Editor, 'The VHF/UHF DX Book'
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek