Ownership History of HP-11C

[Mary Smith]

Is there any way to find out the original owner of an HP-11C? I am curious if you can determine if the original owner was a government or a general public owner.

[Randy Smith]

Sometimes an original owner will engrave his initials or social security number into the case. If the US government was the original owner there will most likely be some type of label on the machine or serial number engraved into the case for inventory purposes. If there is no evidence of any of this, it is likely that your 11C was originally purchased by an individual, not the government.

[John Nelson]

Talk to the calculator... sometimes they will answer back.

:)

[Dia C. Tran]

You may have to resort to torture to get the info out of the calculator. I am not sure if it's legal.
Many original owners registered their purchases with HP. HP should have this info but I doubt that you can get it out of them.
(May be you can torture ........)

[db (martinez, ca.)]

If it was owned by a civil service employee it would have a lot of drawer wear and scuf marks but the keys would feel like new.

[Mary Smith]

Thank you so much for everyone's response. The info has been very helpful to me ;D

[westridge_cz]

I don't know about the HP-11C, but there were a few HP-35's that were engraved with the initials A.E.C. (Atomic Energy Commission) and some HP-35's had a silver "Property of the U.S. Gov't" sticker on them.