Well, it happened again. Today someone dropped by the archives, and I got distracted by something totally interesting.

Turns out my visitor is a “ham”—a ham radio operator. He asked me if I knew Dave Packard’s ham radio call number. Dave was a ham, as were many of the early engineers at HP. According to his book, The HP Way, Dave’s call number, which he got as a teenager in Colorado, was 9DRV.

Only one problem, said my visitor—that number makes no sense. According to him, there should be a letter in front of it.

When one radio operator would contact another, they would send a postcard as a follow-up. I happen to have a collection of ham postcards from the 1930s in the archives.

Although I don’t have any postcards from Colorado, I have them from many other states, and all of their call numbers start with a “W.” The postcards from other countries all start with different letters.

I have one card from Missouri that starts with a “9.” Perhaps it was a convention to assume the “W” for the U.S. call numbers. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say that Dave’s call number was W9DRV. Any hams out there want to comment?

Why am I interested in ham radio? Well, note this 1939 photo of the HP garage. See the pole on top?



I never could figure out what it was. In fact, I thought it was a clothesline, because now there is an old clothesline reel attached to it. However, when we were doing the garage restoration in 2005, the construction crew told me they found antennae wire running from the pole down into the garage through the back window. It’s possible that Dave was pursuing his ham radio hobby in the garage at 367 Addison Avenue.

Here are photos of some of the cards in the HP Archives collection.