STME58
890 posts
Jun 16, 2014
11:54 AM
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I was watching a promotional video on the 75th anniversary of HP when I heard that one of their early products, before the successful 200A audio oscillator that they first sold to Disney to use in the Movie "Fantasia", was a harmonica tuner.
With a little research I discovered that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were approached to design a harp tuner.
"T.I. Moseley approached Bill and Dave for help. T.I.’s theory was that all harmonicas were made overseas so therefore there should be a great opportunity for someone to have an American made harmonica. T.I.’s question was, "How do you tune a harmonica?", and he came down to ask Bill and Dave to help him work out a device to tune harmonicas. What Bill and Dave determined was that the human ear is pretty sensitive to tonal changes in music and they would not be able to devise a system that would accomplish this tuning. Of course with today's technology the project would be easier." (http://www.smecc.org/hewlett-packard,_the_early_years.htm)
Later on there was a Mosley division of HP which became the San Diego Division and was the birthplace of the inkjet printer. Had Bill and Dave been successful with the harmonica tuner the world might be a bit different place. (maybe not, how many units would a successful harmonica tuner sell in the late 30's?)
Note that T I Mosley's question "How do you tune a harmonica", has still not been adequately answered. ;-)
Last Edited by STME58 on Jun 16, 2014 12:01 PM
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