Why did Tektronix stop making the great scopes?

[Martin.M]

Wuerstchenhund is right, there is a problem with some of the old high voltage transformers. It is a thermal problem, they are sitting in a plastic case and warm up, after 40 years of working it may be possible a lost of isolation and the transformer fail... typical for 547 and 556..   
The best idea is to insert a little CPU-fan on that box, so the replacement transformer will work the next 50 years without problems.

healthy 556 serial 700444, plugged 4 channels + spectrum analyzer


I have a lot of fun to make a Tek Show in any radio museum and see there old engineers who remember what they have done.
Last month I was in a music studio to look for a mixing console. The little 213 found the problem faster then the time I have to use on a DSO to tell him what I want to test now
And next month I need to visit Tek at the "embeddet systems", with my 310A to get a family picture 

In 40 years we will see if there are still DSO made in 2014 what are allready working or only some informations about them.

I am collecting this nice old instruments, restoring, repair, use them sometimes, its my hobby.
The most old Tek will be destroyed by any tube vultures who want to sale the tubes in the bay to make a win.
So enjoy them now, we have saved some old Tek for you to remember the old times of a greatful engineering. See my site for some of them.

greetings
Martin

[G0HZU]

Like it or not, the vast majority of time domain instrument operation and theory of operation are based on the basic frame work and foundations created by Tektronix decades ago. aka, Tektronix 500 series.

Agreed. What is saddening is the disrespect for what was achieved in the golden era from the 50s through to the early 70s. It's easy to laugh at old technology. But in those days test gear was conceived and designed by engineers of the highest calibre and there would have been very little influence from corporate beancounters. This shows in the fabulous build quality and attention to detail in test gear from this classic era. The associated technical documentation easily reveals the calibre and passion of the engineers that designed and influenced every aspect of the manufacturing of the test gear.

Today, the clever technology is hidden deep inside modern ICs and much of the test gear today is designed by people 'groomed' to
exploit the technology inside these chips. i.e. the test gear will be designed by people sat all day at a computer using somebody else's CAD tools. The beancounters have a say in the build quality and the user interface won't be designed by high calibre engineers anymore. So you end up with cheap, buggy, low build quality (disposable) stuff made in the far east.

[Rupunzell]

Heat is one of the root problems that result in the HV transformer failures.

Take a closer look at the soft ferrite core of a failed HV transformer. It will have a change in color and visible crystalline structure when compared to a new or properly operating transformer. This is due to the stress from heat and magnetic field cycling over decades of service. The soft ferrite no long has the same characteristics as it once did (increased losses in the soft ferrite results in more heat compounding the problem). Other problems would be insulation break down from high voltage stress combined with moisture retention within the core. Both results causes internal arcing and further insulation break down and eventually a failed transformer.

It would be wise to put these tek transformers into a slow bake to significantly remove and lower their moisture content before trying to power them up slowly. This does help reduce the risk of HV break down of these transformers if they have been in storage un-used for a very long time.

These problems can and do happen to many high voltage components. While design, materials used and production techniques can mitigate many of these inherent problems with HV bits, these Tek transformers dying after many decades of constant service is not all that bad.. long after the current generation of disposable bug ridden software driven devices have been ditched into the land fill or recycled into who knows what as these devices are generally not really repairable.

As for the fire bottle (tubes) robbers, they can get plenty of new ones from Russia, China and other nations that still produce them. These thieves need to leave vintage test gear alone. Tek & hp aged then tested their tubes to reduce their failure rate. Some of these tubes are made into matched pairs for specific applications.


Bernice

Wuerstchenhund is right, there is a problem with some of the old high voltage transformers. It is a thermal problem, they are sitting in a plastic case and warm up, after 40 years of working it may be possible a lost of isolation and the transformer fail... typical for 547 and 556..   
The best idea is to insert a little CPU-fan on that box, so the replacement transformer will work the next 50 years without problems.

greetings
Martin

[Rupunzell]

There is an awful lot of intellectual honesty, intellectual discipline and most of all creative problem solving fully supported by management at the time when Tek was creating that stuff. Beyond that, they were built to last and be repaired and intended to be used by folks who understood how to use them properly.


The individuals who designed and created instrumentation at Tek at that time were folks like Richard Ropiequet that invented wide range sweep aka that 1-2-5 sequence so very common on time domain instruments to this day. Richard start out as a Chemist, moved to the plastics industry and eventually did work in particle and quantum physics. These folks were more scientist than the modern "electronics engineer" which became specialized in a specific area. Folks like Richard had the broad and diverse background to draw from all of which allows them to solve problems in creative and innovative ways.
http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Scientists&tab1=Scientists&tab2=Display&id=182

Richard Ropiequet also studied psychology. Ponder for a moment why Richard had an interest in this subject along with science and technology?

Then there were individuals like John Kobbe who out of sheer frustration and desperation from reflections caused by a probe  coax cable ripped out the center conductor and replaced it with a section of resistive wire. This damped out the reflections significantly, then adding a lead-lag network resulted in the ubiqutious and very common passive scope probe of today.


Engineering students today are often driven to study stuff that is rather specialized and marketable when they graduate. These highly specialize skills are quote marketable and in demand upon their graduation. After they have worked in industry for some number of years or decades these skill-sets can easily become obsolete and no longer marketable. This often pushes them out of their technical work and relegates the to the pension farm.

No too long ago, Silly Valley lost another significant individual, John Hall. Another individual who had a diverse background and great creativity and passion for this work.
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438149/In-memory-of-John-Haslet-Hall--Intersil-co-founder

Lastly, one more story.

Bill Hewlett had the idea of creating a "shirt pocket" scientific calculator on day and put that challenge to Barney Oliver and his group at hp labs. For several tries, Barney presented Bill with a prototype calculator only to be met with a flat out NO, not gonna work. The proto was too big, too clunky, buttons in the wrong place, buttons did not feel right, display quality poor, shape of the case awaked or other. After much frustration and efforts to make a prototype that would be acceptable to Bill, Barney and crew finally succeeded. This became the hp-35 scientific calculator. There was not design by committee, marketing studies, marketing research, bean-counter intervention. just Bill's innate sense for what the product had to be. This was the way things were.


Bernice

Like it or not, the vast majority of time domain instrument operation and theory of operation are based on the basic frame work and foundations created by Tektronix decades ago. aka, Tektronix 500 series.

Agreed. What is saddening is the disrespect for what was achieved in the golden era from the 50s through to the early 70s. It's easy to laugh at old technology. But in those days test gear was conceived and designed by engineers of the highest calibre and there would have been very little influence from corporate beancounters. This shows in the fabulous build quality and attention to detail in test gear from this classic era. The associated technical documentation easily reveals the calibre and passion of the engineers that designed and influenced every aspect of the manufacturing of the test gear.

Today, the clever technology is hidden deep inside modern ICs and much of the test gear today is designed by people 'groomed' to
exploit the technology inside these chips. i.e. the test gear will be designed by people sat all day at a computer using somebody else's CAD tools. The beancounters have a say in the build quality and the user interface won't be designed by high calibre engineers anymore. So you end up with cheap, buggy, low build quality (disposable) stuff made in the far east.

[Richard Crowley]

Bill Hewlett had the idea of creating a "shirt pocket" scientific calculator on day and put that challenge to Barney Oliver and his group at hp labs. For several tries, Barney presented Bill with a prototype calculator only to be met with a flat out NO, not gonna work. The proto was too big, too clunky, buttons in the wrong place, buttons did not feel right, display quality poor, shape of the case awaked or other. After much frustration and efforts to make a prototype that would be acceptable to Bill, Barney and crew finally succeeded. This became the hp-35 scientific calculator. There was not design by committee, marketing studies, marketing research, bean-counter intervention. just Bill's innate sense for what the product had to be. This was the way things were.

Reminiscent of reports of Steve Jobs.  While I do not admire Apple's "walled garden" philosophy of creating appliances for dumb users, you can't deny their sense of style and marketing genius.

[Rupunzell]

Steve Jobs learned this from Bill & Dave's hp and experience from starting and failing at his other companies.

The story of Steve Jobs calling up Bill Hewlett asking for some 7400 series logic chips to make a frequency counter was all true. With that Bill offered a summer job for Steve at hp.


Bernice

Reminiscent of reports of Steve Jobs.  While I do not admire Apple's "walled garden" philosophy of creating appliances for dumb users, you can't deny their sense of style and marketing genius.

[nctnico]

Like it or not, the vast majority of time domain instrument operation and theory of operation are based on the basic frame work and foundations created by Tektronix decades ago. aka, Tektronix 500 series.

Agreed. What is saddening is the disrespect for what was achieved in the golden era from the 50s through to the early 70s. It's easy to laugh at old technology. But in those days test gear was conceived and designed by engineers of the highest calibre and there would have been very little influence from corporate beancounters. This shows in the fabulous build quality and attention to detail in test gear from this classic era. The associated technical documentation easily reveals the calibre and passion of the engineers that designed and influenced every aspect of the manufacturing of the test gear.

I'm not sure whether designs where entirely left to engineers. That way no product would ever be finished. I don't think much has changed except that time-to-market is much shorter nowadays and new technologies evolve faster.
Still I wouldn't rule out the designs made by Tek in the 80's and 90's. The 2200 series and TDS500/600/700 series where also very well designed. I had to fix the time base divider circuitry in my Tek 2230 (broken trace from a dodgy repair job by someone else) and I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of how it was designed from TTL logic chips.

[Martin.M]

213, my little problem solver 


that little scope portable includes a accuracy true rms on screen dmm what can read voltage directly from the probe. So it have a switch scope/dmm.  The battery charger is also included in the case. Tek engineering, 1975...  wired parts, no smd, easy to repair.


greetings
Martin

[Rupunzell]

When to stop and call it done depends on engineering experience and how many products or projects a given engineer has complete over their years of working experience. This makes the difference between a strict engineer and the VP of engineering. The VP of engineering better have a broad view of what is important and what is not in the marketable product. Get that wrong and everyone in the company and related will suffer.

In the case of digital stuff, designs can be more defined in their functionality. There is often the option of altering the firmware-software to allow fixes on the fly if needed.

Analog stuff is never simple as there are many shades of gray when it comes to making judgement and choices as to what is good enough. Really well seasoned and experienced analog design folks know when to quit as further efforts are not going to result in significant gains. Further  performance gains are going to be really, really difficult as the limits of semiconductor device physics are near and performance limits of passive components become a serious problem.

Having been in this industry for decades, it has changed a great deal. These days it is much about rapid product cycles with "good enough" being the norm. This leaves little room for proper refinement and development of product design. This was the barrier between the instrumentation world and consumer electronics world. The current low cost DSO's and all related are an example of how this barrier between consumer electronics and instrumentation has been mostly removed. Vintage test gear was designed and built to be in service for a long time (often decades), repairable, well supported and more. Lab grade instrumentation was also expected to feel precision and be precision in how their controls worked, operated and overall ergonomics. As one who grew up on this stuff, the current plastic wonders of instrumentation gross me out in many ways even if their electrical performance is good.

All of which brings up the business aspect of this industry. The electronics industry has evolved into to more of the computing and consumer techno-widget industry for mass consumption. All intended to be low cost, highly profitable with a service life not much beyond it's warranty period. Marketing is forced using features and how many more features the new techno widget has to offer and how the previous techno-widget is now obsolete due to the leap in technology. Stoking buyers to toss out the old thing and purchase the new thing... Even if the old thing solved their real need for that technological solution extremely well.

Make no mistake, technology has progressed in many ways and has resulted in rather amazing stuff. Except, there is a balance to this and a need to separate the fact from marketing hype. As marketing and business folks know moving merchandise means profits and company growth. This appears to be the primary driving force behind today's electronics industry.

In many ways, the electronics industry has matured an become a commodity market.


Bernice

I'm not sure whether designs where entirely left to engineers. That way no product would ever be finished. I don't think much has changed except that time-to-market is much shorter nowadays and new technologies evolve faster.
Still I wouldn't rule out the designs made by Tek in the 80's and 90's. The 2200 series and TDS500/600/700 series where also very well designed. I had to fix the time base divider circuitry in my Tek 2230 (broken trace from a dodgy repair job by someone else) and I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of how it was designed from TTL logic chips.

[rgarnett1923]

Tek stopped making good scopes and over-priced average ones when Danaher, the "Rent Seekers" bought them out and sacked all their highly paid competent engineers, replacing them with cheap graduates ruled by extravagantly paid accountants and lawyers.

I had an 200 MHz MDO 3024.  It had mixed signal, a few of the serial decodes and whilst the interface was a bit slow it did everything I needed. The triggering was great.

Problem is it failed after seven years and was going to cost $10,000 Aus. fixed price to fix.  To purchase a new equivalent with the same options was going to cost over $30,000 Au. That is just BS.

I paid less than half that for that for the original one.  Tek are dead to me now. They were a good company, but now they are a milking cow for the greedy US oligarchs who wouldn't know an oscilloscope if it fell on them.  What Danaher did is what is wrong with America today.  Everything they touch turns to lead.

[Jaak]

Yes, Danaher killed Tek.  I was at Tek from 2000 to 2012 and went through the painful experience of seeing excellent engineers and resources removed by Danaher, effectively destroying Tek's competitive advantages and leading edge expertise.  My major customer was AMD (former ATI in Canada), and when you get answers like "We have to prioritize what we work on" and see technology innovation and customer response times balloon, you start asking questions.  Danaher screwed Tek and it seemed they wanted to turn it in to a Fluke where they just milked the brand for profit, instead of being a bleeding edge innovator.

It was painful to experience at the leading edge.  Especially when you were used to "I need a PCI express  GenX solution to test some hardware" before Intel was even past simulation of it.  The evaporation of development sucked to watch. 

Double whammy, I was in Hewlett-Packard Test and Measurement when the Real HP was spun off as Agilent.  That sucked huge too.  We had to practice saying the new name, it was weird.  It wasn't revealed and the new company was just called NewCo until the name was announced.  (At which point one of the inside guys said, hey, anagram of Agilent is genital, now I know why we feel this way...)


But Hey, my love for the real HP and Pre Danaher Tek lives on!

[Martin72]

(At which point one of the inside guys said, hey, anagram of Agilent is genital, now I know why we feel this way...)

 

[coppice]

Yes, Danaher killed Tek.

Did they kill Tek, or just buy it cheap because it was already falling into a bad state? Both Tektronix and HP were hit badly by the end of the cold war, and the reduction in their lucrative defence sales. HP recovered. I'm not sure Tek ever did.

[slugrustle]

My coworker loves the MSO 6 series he's been using at work lately.  I haven't used it myself, but the TPP1000 (10x, 1Ghz, 10MΩ, <4pF, 300V) and TPP0502 (2x, 500MHz, 2MΩ, 12.7pF, 300V) passive scope probes look simply incredible.  I don't know how they do it.  At first, I assumed the 1GHz probes were active, but then I pulled the datasheet.

I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.

[tautech]

I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.

The 10x 350 MHz SP2035A and 500 MHz SP5050A autosense SDS2000X Plus probes are nice and a step up from those supplied with the 100 and 200 MHz models. Their timmers are in the BNC so they can be miniaturized some.
https://siglentna.com/product/sp2035a-auto-sense-350-mhz-oscilloscope-probes/

[slugrustle]

Oh, I've already upgraded to Cal Test CT4207 probes (and CT4200 and CT4206 for more special purposes).  They have good specs and come with nice accessories.  They're still not as good as the Tek probes, which seem to need some kind of fancy compensation.

[David Hess]

Once Danaher took over, they began dismantling the company, outsourcing as much as they could, and left the company a shell of its former self.

Tek suffered from a massive amount of brain drain as well as the inefficiencies of total vertical integration.

...

The vertical integration was just a huge albatross. Owning dedicated facilities for everything from PWBs to CRTs to plastics shops that not only molded every knob and case part, they even built all the tooling in-house.  The overhead costs were ridiculous - and only a ridiculous price tag could support it.

The extreme lack of vertical integration was a failure as well.

One of the things Danaher got rid of was the wire and cable division.  They could just buy wire and cable from others, right?  The employees were laid off or transferred and the equipment sold for junk before someone noticed that *nobody* could provide cable for oscilloscope probes at any price.  The market simply did not exist, with the result that Tektronix lost the capability of making probes as well.

I think they ended up paying even more for custom cable production after a delay of months where no probes were made.

The plastic shop also made the custom rotary cam switches so when that was lost, so was any design which relied on those switches, and those switches replaced the very expensive relays used on earlier designs.  So they traded the expense of making their own switches with the greater expense of buying RF relays, since at that point they no longer made the relays either.

This was also when Tektronix stopped publishing service documentation.

There were other changes.  Employees were no longer allowed "time off" to work on personal projects using company resources.  They were no longer allowed to buy parts or equipment from the company store.  Tektronix instead paid for surplus equipment to be ground up and thrown into a landfill.

Danaher screwed Tek and it seemed they wanted to turn it in to a Fluke where they just milked the brand for profit, instead of being a bleeding edge innovator.

I saw something about Danaher and Fluke a couple years ago that would explain what Danaher was doing.

They would buy companies and extract the value of the company's brand, ruining it, by loading the company with debt.  Stripping the company of vertical integration would then just be a way to lower costs in the short term before they sold or bankrupted it.

[David Hess]

However, the device development and process development has been based in Oregon since the late 1970s when the Logic Technology Development operation moved up from the Silicon Valley. At any given time we have 100s of people from all the high-volume manufacturing fabs all over the planet are here in Oregon to transfer each new process from D1 to their respective factories from Dalian to Leixlip and Kiryat Gat and points in between.  The product development is done by groups in many places (like Haifa) using the design rules we develop for each succeeding process.

Bob Colwell said that besides two major design teams which would alternate because the design cycle was twice as long as the production cycle, individual fabs had design teams doing shrinks and such because it was very very expensive to have a new process come online without a design immediately available for production.

[Howardlong]

My coworker loves the MSO 6 series he's been using at work lately.  I haven't used it myself, but the TPP1000 (10x, 1Ghz, 10MΩ, <4pF, 300V) and TPP0502 (2x, 500MHz, 2MΩ, 12.7pF, 300V) passive scope probes look simply incredible.  I don't know how they do it.  At first, I assumed the 1GHz probes were active, but then I pulled the datasheet.

I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.

The TPP0250/0500/1000 10x probes all have 3.9pF loading, and will only work with compatible scopes with TekVPI standard, so you're tied to Tek.

TekVPI uses a one-wire interface and each probe has a serial number, so the scope remembers the calibration parameters once you've run a cal. I've always assumed that there's some kind of smart equalisation goes on in the scope front end that's proprietary to Tek, and that's how they manage to get a 3.9pF load.

By the way, the internal construction of the TPP1000 TekVPI connector is definitely different to that of the TPP0250 and TPP0500, so if you have any ideas thatg you could fool a 250MHz probe to work at 1GHz you have some work to do.

So in short, while I agree these passive probes have great loading characteristics, the compromise is that they'll only work with certain compatible Tek scopes.

[coppercone2]

i feel like their shit like the MDO SA is glitchy and im not happy with the performance so price is not the problem. freezing trying to take a simple measurement. 

if I was seriously dependent on that capability there would be some old HP there. why do I have the feeling the wire and cable guys were the brain of the operation . I saw a opportunity once to make a board to get rid of some cables and a very experienced engineer was like NO. I thought OK maybe he has a point. years later I see yeah he had a damn good point. I see now just cost pressure was driving me crazy into trying to implement a undesirable design that would basically constrict product development to save a few wires by making everything into a fucking broadway production. Now it translates to me like "KILL THE FUCKING SYSTEMS ENGINEER WITH A CRACKER"

Oh yeah I see nothing great about the 'board mount' modules either that they tried to push to get rid of another cable. Header pin stacks for a power supply for 60 amps. They seem to break. Why do I think if they had a big cable in the back it would be fine? chassis is also paper thin

Also its just a stack of pins on a board that you need to seat a module on. There is also a sticker that says "danger 60 amps" on two exposed rows of header pins. Lose wire in that chassis goes BOOM

they tried really hard to get rid of cables but its still bloody expenisve and it just pisses people that have to work with it wayy the fuck off.

as for the buttons yeah their shit too. I want plastic buttons that click. You graze the fucking rubber on the MDO and it will switch coupling etc. I had about 200 recordings go to AC coupling (for a big shot multi big company evaluation thing! nice delay to explain to my boss you cheap ass mother fuckers!!!! when you work fast to get stuff done your counting on not having to look at the fucking screen to see if settings change) . I don't feel confident at all using that god damn shit no matter how expensive it is


and something is fuked up with the memory too I had it change settings on me when i was away from it. I go through a check list every time I use that thing to make sure its all good now because you can't trust it.

also for some devices during aging studies you gotta get it right or the sample is fucked!!!!!!!! their one time only measurements!!!!!!!! oscilloscopes can be super critical you can't be doing this crap with them!!!! with how god damn unreliable those new switches are I would prefer a fucking matrix board to solder jumpers on to configure the god damn scope, at least I am not worried it will try to fuck me!!!!

and sometimes it failed to trigger when I had other equipment hooked up to the same node that showed me it should have triggered! WHAT THE HELL TEKTRONIX??!?!! DO I HAVE TO SOLDER A MULTIMETER WIRE TO THE CENTER PIN TO PREVENT YOU FROM BLAMING THE GOD DAMN PROBE ? I WANT TO SOLDER A FUCKING ANALOG DIRECT CONNECT MONITOR PORT ON THE SCOPE (DAMN THE SIGNAL INTEGRITY) TO VERIFY THAT THE TRIGGER DID INDEED FAIL AND ITS NOT MY FAULT!

[slugrustle]

My coworker loves the MSO 6 series he's been using at work lately.  I haven't used it myself, but the TPP1000 (10x, 1Ghz, 10MΩ, <4pF, 300V) and TPP0502 (2x, 500MHz, 2MΩ, 12.7pF, 300V) passive scope probes look simply incredible.  I don't know how they do it.  At first, I assumed the 1GHz probes were active, but then I pulled the datasheet.

I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.

The TPP0250/0500/1000 10x probes all have 3.9pF loading, and will only work with compatible scopes with TekVPI standard, so you're tied to Tek.

TekVPI uses a one-wire interface and each probe has a serial number, so the scope remembers the calibration parameters once you've run a cal. I've always assumed that there's some kind of smart equalisation goes on in the scope front end that's proprietary to Tek, and that's how they manage to get a 3.9pF load.

By the way, the internal construction of the TPP1000 TekVPI connector is definitely different to that of the TPP0250 and TPP0500, so if you have any ideas thatg you could fool a 250MHz probe to work at 1GHz you have some work to do.

So in short, while I agree these passive probes have great loading characteristics, the compromise is that they'll only work with certain compatible Tek scopes.

Oh, completely understood.  There's no way to get those kinds of loadings and bandwidths on a passive probe without some really fancy software-involved compensation, and only Tek scopes have the interface and software to do it.  So I'm sticking with my Siglent scope and ordinary probes.  It's still cool technology though!

[floobydust]

After 5 years (at 2012) evil Danaher Corp. had canned half the Tek employees, 5 rounds of layoffs, 1,000 people out the door.
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2012/12/tektronix_five_years_after_sal.html
This is how a mega-conglomerate makes money, clear-cutting yet replanting nothing.
I could go on about the president of Tektronix at the time Amir Aghdaei, formerly VP of Fluke, a Danaher slasher now CEO of some dental Envista Holdings $8M/year compensation, as yet another MBA decimator of great brands. The worm moves on when things go sour.

I thought one of Tek's missteps was going full in on Power PC for the CPU choice, and it's kind of a slow dog and lagged for clock speed, memory and features.
Then I remember their scopes had a built-in spectrum analyzer focusing on cellphone communications use, and it was not useful yet very expensive. Went with Agilent that year.

[abeyer]

I thought one of Tek's missteps was going full in on Power PC for the CPU choice, and it's kind of a slow dog and lagged for clock speed, memory and features.

Given how much heavy lifting ends up in the asics or fpgas on modern digital scopes, that seems like a pretty minor concern. Not to mention that if you ignore the 30 year old freescale designs for the land that time forgot automotive industry and actually look at modern ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power10#Design)... I'd be impressed by a scope that needs more compute than that.

[johansen]

Can't find the 2465B list price but the 2467B with a different CRT cost in 1990 was $13,045

Source:
http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/2467

So think of how cheap they are now taking into account inflation (around $24,100 in 2014 money)

13 grand in 1990 was the hospital bill for 3 standard no complication pregnancies. As in the full 9 months not just the hospital bill.

Its like 150 today.

24 grand will barely buy me a bathroom remodel. In 1990, half of a house.

[coppercone2]

damn machines are not doing their job to give us more free time and make our lives cheaper to maintain