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from our president's desk
NE OF THE MEASURES of a successful company is At present there are relatively few people within the
O its ability to plan for the future. This applies not only
to the planning of products, plants, financing, and
corporation who are near or above retirement age. These
people have already been advised individually of our policy,
other basic factors affecting the course of business, but also and are being assisted by our personnel staff in planning
to long-range personnel planning. We must always look their retirement. As time goes on, we intend to contact people
ahead to see that we have an adequate number of qualified five years before their retirement and follow up with them
people to staff our growing operations, and that these people during that five-year period to help them make a smooth
are well paid and enjoy broad employee benefits, including adjustment to retired life. There is no question that retire-
a sound and comprehensive retirement program. ment does involve a major adjustment, and for this reason
During the early years of our company, we had little need the company has a very sincere interest in this counseling
for a formal retirement policy. As we grew into a much program and intends to spend considerable time and effort
larger organization, however, we found it desirable to have on it. However, any company program can be of only limited
a corporate-wide retirement plan. This assures that all of our help. Successful retirement is largely a personal matter re-
6,000 people in the United States will be treated alike, and quiring a great deal of individual thought and planning.
should they move from one part of the company to another, One of the principal concerns to individuals retiring is
will enjoy the same retirement benefits. the question of medical and hospital insurance coverage.
We have also reached the point where it is desirable to Although there are policies available to people in this age
adopt a fixed retirement age, so that each individual will bracket to which present policies can be converted, these are
know when he is to retire and can plan ahead for it. This also rather expensive. To help alleviate this problem, we are
enables us to know well in advance when specific individuals temporarily adopting a policy covering up to $2,500 of
will retire, so we can help in planning their retirement and medical and hospital expenses of the employee and his spouse
also make adequate provision for their replacement. for an eight-year period. To be eligible for this, one must
At a recent meeting our Board of Directors set a manda- retire after age 60 and have been with us at least ten years.
tory retirement age of 65, with the option to retire earlier There are other detailed aspects of the retirement program
if so desired. Prior to this action, the Board made a thorough which your supervisor will be happy to discuss with you, or
review of retirement practices throughout industry and found which can be explained by our Palo Alto or your divisional
that 65 is normal retirement age in 90 percent of the com- personnel department. The important thing is that all of our
panies surveyed. This is due in part to the fact that Federal people be aware of the age 65 requirement, and of our
Social Security becomes applicable at 65 to everyone who is intention to do everything possible to assure a well-planned,
eligible, or at age 62 on a reduced basis. successful retirement for everyone in the company.
www.HPARCHIVE.com
Betty Burr, meter assembler,
adjusts the axial position of a moving coil.
The platinum twist
for H P meters
T HERE'S MORE TO THE TWIST than meets the eye at
Hewlett-Packard.
The twist in point is that performed by a tiny platinum
band in the heart of HP's recently introduced taut band
meter.
Creating better components, better designs, and better
methods of quality assurance is a continuing and underlying
philosophy at HP-and the HP twist is an offshoot of this
effort, relating specifically to the meters used in many HP
instruments.
The taut band meter story really starts several years ago
when the company pioneered an automatic system to calibrate
and photographically print a meter face to match the charac-
teristics of each individual meter. The need was obvious.
Having a standard scale for all meters means that each indi-
vidual meter can be expected to have a small error in
"reading." This is because each meter, no matter how pre-
cisely built, reacts differently to an electrical current. By
recognizing the existence of variation, and printing indi-
vidually calibrated scales for each meter face, extreme ac-
curacies of better than one-half of one percent are consistently
achieved.
After all of this work, the problem would seem to be dis