Jack Day
During the spring of 1949, I was notified that the telephone company
(Pacific Tel. & Tel.) would not be hiring temporary people that summer
I had been working there in the Line Assignment Department during
the three previous summers, so I would have to find a temporary job
during the coming summer.
I had become acquainted with the Tektronix oscilloscope at Reed College
during my junior year, and thought perhaps I might be able to get
on. I knew nothing about the company, other than the fact that the
founder had graduated from Reed and had built an oscilloscope while
there, the remains were still on the shelf in the Physics department.
One day after school, I stopped in their facilities on Southeast
Seventh and Hawthorne, and was directed to Jack Murdock, one of the
founders and the general manager. He asked me about my Navy experience,
both schools and shipboard, and said he would let me know.
I had also applied at the Reynolds Metals aluminum plant in Troutdale,
as they were said to be hiring, and I had met Bill Noel, the manager,
at some function or other. Reynolds would be the better job, as they
paid $1.65/hr, whereas Tek paid $1.00, plus bonus, whatever that was.
I would prefer the work at Tek, as I knew something about it, and the
Reynolds job would be on the pot-line, which would be hot and dangerous.
However, we needed the money.
I heard nothing for several days. However, one afternoon, after
school, I was waiting for my wife, daughter and her Mom (with whom we
were living at the time) to return home, when the phone rang, and it
was Jack Murdock telling me they would like me to work for them. I
hung up the phone, the family returned, and I was telling them about
Jack’s call, when the phone rang again. It was Bill Noel from Reynolds,
saying that he’d like me to come to work for them. I was so excited
about the Tek job that I’m afraid I said, “You’re just too late, Mr.
Noel”, and hung up the phone.
Unknown to me, my cousin Chuck Nolan, in the Electrical Engineering
Program at OSU, had also applied at Tek, and we started work the same
day. We never did figure out who was No. 46 and who was No. 47.
Since we were in northeast Portland, I found a ride with Pius Scherr,
who lived further out. I sometimes wondered whether I would live to
tell the tale, as he drove like a madman, and was blind in one eye to
boot.
One of the customs I observed during my first few weeks was that when
ever someone had a birthday, they bought cake for the whole crew.
Since my birthday occurred July 26, I bought the cake from the local
bakery on the corner behind the plant.
I also volunteered to teach a class on the elementary physics of electrons,
since that was the foundation of the cathode-ray tube (needless to say,
I was afflicted with the Reed College syndrome).
Because Nancy was growing and maturing, and some friends had taken 8mm
movies of her, we wanted a record of her development. Since I now had
a job, I mentioned my interest in a movie camera to Howard, among
others, and he recommended I go see Joe Freck, who had a camera shop
downtown. We bought a Kodak 16mm magazine-load camera.
I was asked to plan and coordinate the company picnic, so I chose to
have it at Ariel Dam on the Lewis River in Washington. We still have
movies taken that day. Most of the people pictured are no longer living
(2010). People seemed to enjoy themselves, although I must confess
that I completely neglected to arrange for games. However, several
others brought bats and balls, and we were on Merwin lake, so things
went ‘swimmingly’.
Since we were low on funds, I didn’t return to Reed that fall, but
continued at TEK.
Another year, we held the picnic at Ecola Park on the Oregon Coast. By
this time, Howard had met ‘Kit’, whom he eventually married, and they
both were along. By this time. Nancy was four, and she had quite a
time getting acquainted with a fawn from the surrounding forest. The
dress she is wearing in the photo was worn by her daughter when she
became that age, and will be worn by her grand-daughter in a few years.
Everyone knew everyone else at this time. For example, several belong
ed to the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) and for the monthly meet
ings, we ‘carshared’. Both Jack and Howard drove their own cars, and
often invited others of us to ride with them. We discussed their philosophy
of business, and their hopes for the company. For example, both
said they felt that if they could sell a few hundred instruments a
year, they would make a comfortable living for themselves and their
families, provide meaningful employment for a hundred or so employees,
and do their bit for society.
My first job was working in assembly, making probes, under Miles Tippery,
an owner. It was a simple task, and I suffered it for a week or two. One day,
Miles asked me how I liked the work, and I told him that it was OK, but I’d like
something more challenging. As it happened, Logan Belleville had just released a new oscilloscope he had designed to production -the Type 512 -and I was assigned the task of testing them before they were boxed and shipped.
The Type 512 was a high-gain, low frequency instrument, meant for biological work. It had a balanced input amplifier, which could display signals as low as one millivolt and frequencies up to 2mc, and it had a relatively slow sweep that was the most linear I had seen; it was called the “phantastron” circuit, because it was so “phantastically” linear. With modification, it could attain sweeps of thirty seconds or longer.
It immediately became evident that the 512 was so sensitive that, at it’s highest sensitivity, the aging of the input tubes caused the trace to drift off the CRT screen (it heated the filaments by DC, because AC would effect the signal amplification). Logan devised an aging process that would cycle the tubes forty-five minutes ON, fifteen OFF, for 24 hours. The tubes were then tested for the current required give a given deflection on the CRT, they were labeled, and then stored so that the two input stages could be supplied with a matched pair to give stable operation
I loved this work. I corrected miswired circuits, changed wrong resistors
and condensers, etc. The instrument had circuitry to stabilize the operating voltages, even in the pesence of varying line voltages, and had other advantages that the run-of-the-mill competitive instruments did not
have. The same was true of the Type 511, which preceded the 512, for
example, RCA had manufactured their own scopes to ship with thier
TV Transmitter packages, but soon dropped them and, instead, provided
our 511′s and, later, 511A-d (at about one-third the price). Users loved
them and in a relatively short time, we had the market from DuMont and
all the other manufacturers.
I liked to show friends where I worked and sometimes after a concert or play, we would take them by the plant on Hawthorne. Although at that time there was no night shift, someone was always there. if it was Howard, our Nancy, who was going on three and always carried several
Little Golden Books in her purse, would find him and, when we were ready to go, we would find him someplace, squatting and reading to her. This happened more than once.
About three months after I started at Tek, Frances Frost, a cousin of Howard Vollum came to work, and his first job was making probes, as mine had been. Although he and his soon-to-be-wife Margaret would play a very large role in our social lif in later years, we had little to do with each other at this early stage.
In late fal!, a number of us went to Seattle to an IRE conference, and I found myself in the car with W.K. “Dal” Dallas, the marketing manager.
In looking back, I think someone had arranged this so that he could evaluate me because, in a few weeks, he offered me a job in marketing as a Sales Engineer (later called “Field Engineer”) Other than Dal and his
secretary, Joan Richens, I was the only such person in marketing. Dal
outfitted me with a luxurious wallet for may jacket, a matching leather
covered, green-chalk blotter, and business cards. It was an exciting
time. Although I was placed on salary, it didn’t quite give us the income
I had formerly, because I did not receive overtime (this caused both me and the company some embarrasment later). It was also exciting to go
through the files ans see the unbelieveble number of high-powered research laboratories and high-tech manufacturing firms who used our
equipment.
I talked directly with engineers at organizations who wanted our products. Dal assigned me to deal with the University of Oregon Medical
School, for which Howard had made some special equipment earlier. This
gave me a completely different view of the enormous number of uses to
which our instruments could be put.
In January 1950, Margie and I started to look for property to buy and,
on the 10th, we paid earnest money on a small house on Southwest Charming Way, in the community of Raleigh Hills. It sat on a .9 acre wooded lot at the end of a graveled road about a quarter mile from the intersection of Scholls Ferry Road and Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. It was
pretty primitive: the structure was a 20′ by 24′ converted garage, partitioned with plywood sheeting into a bath separated from a small
entry hall, a small bedroom with an alcove off, where we could put a
crib, and an open closet. The kitchen was a U-shaped area with shelves
for dishes and groceries backing up against the bedroom closet, An L-
shaped counter sat under the shelves and across under a window looking
out upon trees. The sink was under the window. Against the outer wall,
a washer and dryer completed the kitchen area. The rest of the space
comprised a living-dining area. It was eight miles from downtown Port
land. The main reason we chose it was the location and the wooded lot
and, compared to other property at the same price, it was heaven. The
owner was in the middle of a divorce and reduced her asking price of
$4,500 to $3,500, which was all we could raise. Even then, we were
short about $600, and the mother of Margie’s best friend, when she
heard of this, said, “We can loan them the money’, which we paid back
at $15/month, plus interest.
Our move to Charming Way meant that we had to have a car because therewas no bus transportation to Raleigh Hills at that time. I went across
the intersection from TEK to Billingsley Pontiac and bought a ’38 Chev
two-door sedan from Bob Herzog. However, Henry Haase picked up me and
others and took us to and from work, so that Margie could have the car.
There was another lot on the street with an unfinished triple garage,
asking $4,500 and, when we told Bob Davis about it, he bought it and
moved in his wife Elsie and small son Peter. Margie became quite close
with Elsie, although Elsie’s strong Christian Science faith was alien to us.
In late February or early March, Dal and a number of engineers went to
New York City for the annual National Electronics Conference and Con
vention, where our latest instruments would be unveiled and exhibited.
I was left alone, with only Joan Richens for company (and advice). One
day, as I was sitting at Dal’s desk, going over some material about
some sales, the phone rang and this voice at the other end said, “This
is Major so-and-so of the Air Training Command at Scott AFB, Belleville, Illinois. We are interested in your 512 oscilloscope for use at our training schools at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi and Lowry AFB in Denver, where we train service technicians on aircraft radar.” This was the kind of program I knew something about, as I had been through it in the Navy. I told him I thought our new 514 scope -just being introduced in NYC -would better fit their needs as it had higher frequency capabilities than the 512. After a while, I asked, “How many instruments are you talking about, Major?” He said, “About 250″. You can imagine, I about swallowed my tongue; this was the largest order we had ever received. I told him I thought we ought to speak face-to-face about some of the problems of such a large order, as there would need to be trained technicians to maintain the oscilloscopes, in addition to the teachers and students. He did come to Portland to discuss these matters and I set up a rudimentary program whichlater grew into the program for training customer technicians in the repair and operation of our instruments. It became a model for the industry.
In May of 1950, Dal and I went to San Francisco to an exhibit put on
by Neeley Enterprises. Neeley was our distributor in the southwestern
United States (for whom Dal had worked before coming to TEK).
This is probably the place to describe our marketing activities. We
used independent sales organizations to represent us. They were of two
types: distributors and representatives. Distributors bought our products at a reduced price and resold them to the ultimate customers at our advertised prices. Representatives sold our products at the advertised prices and were paid a commission. Both had sales people who were knowledgeable about electronics. The distributors, of whom there
were two, had repair facilities, while the representatives had people
who could do only simple repairs.
Of our two distributors, Neeley Enterprises handled sales in the South
western states, while another larger company handled sales from New
England to Washington, D.C. on the Atlantic seaboard.
The flight to San Francisco was my first flight, and Dal, who was a
pilot himself, twitted me about starting out first class, as the Doug
las DC-6 was the most luxurious plane flying. These early post-WW II
get-togethers were unusual in that both executives, engineers, and
sales people from the various companies represented by Neeley mingled
indiscriminately, with no sense of hierarchy. I met a number of Neeley’s people (and Norm himself) as well as many of his other manufacturer clients, including: Sig and Russell Varian of Varian Associates (they invented the Klystron tube which became so important to ultra-high frequency,high power radar); Bill Hewlett and David Packard of Hewlett-Packard Company (whose audio frequency generators we used in the Navy); engineers from Eitel-McCullough (who made the Eimac transmitter
tubes some of our shipboard radars had used during the war);Mr. Macintosh, whose audio amplifier was the best available, and
who immersed it in molten tar to prevent copiers), etc, etc.
This trip to San Francisco was my first since our seven months there
for radar training during WWII.
Later that year, I flew to Albuquerque, NM, to accompany a Neeley
‘safari’ across the Southwest to San Diego. This trip was memorable
because in Albuquerque, Richard Kiley (who had been Stirling Oldberg’s
radio officer on the Massachusetts during the war, and was also the
‘coding and decoding officer’ for the ship), had me to dinner at his
home. He was now working for Sandia Corporation, the people who manu
factured A-bombs. I had a chance to ask him whether some of the stories Oldberg had told me were true that, among other things, I had been
recommended for a commission while at sea. He said they were, and I
had.
This was my first time in that part of the country. Phoenix was still
a ‘sleepy’ little southwestern city that was just beginning to blossom
into the center of high tech industry that it now is.
Back at the plant, Dal had me get my hands into some of the detail
work marketing involved. For instance, he had me design and produce,
in cooperation with Felix Nash who did our printing, the first real
catalog of Tek products; it was in colors, plastic bindings, with the
various product lines in separate divisions, and complete technical
description of the instruments, even to the tube complements of each
one (to show that we were abreast of the very latest technology). This
catalog became the model for our catalogs for the next fifteen years.
Dal also had me do some magazine ads. This was my introduction to the
power of advertising! We had two auxiliary instruments, the Types 104
and 105 Square Wave Generators, which were used to test the perform ance of our oscilloscopes before they were shipped to our customers.
Each produced a series of ‘step functions’ in the form of ‘square
waves’, which were abrupt changes from one voltage to another, with no
intervening ‘slope’. Obviously, this is theoretically impossible, but
we found that the ability of oscilloscope amplifiers to reproduce
these abrupt changes accurately determined how faithfully they would
reproduce any arbitrary voltage change they were investigating.
The Type 104 was used to check scope response at several selected fre
quencies which slightly exceeded the range of designed performance.
The Type 105 was used in engineering design, to test over a wide range
of performance. It was considerably more expensive than the Type 104.
Since they were both auxiliary instruments, we didn’t want to waste
much advertising expense on them, yet we wanted our customers to know
that they were available. I decided on a single column joint advertise
ment, designed to occupy one column in the technical magazines we used
to reach our customers. I described the Type 104 as a ‘production line’
tool, and the Type 105 as a ‘laboratory utility” tool. Imagine my surprised, yet delighted, reaction when we received two separate orders,
from different organizations, one for the ‘Production Line Type 104
Sguare Wave Generator’, and the other for the ‘Laboratory Utility Type
105 Square Wave Generator’.
I also used a phrase in our advertising that ‘TEKTRONIX MEANS EXCELL
ENCE IN INSTRUMENTATION’. Whether I thought of this myself or it had
been used before, I don’t remember. However, -to jump ahead a bit one
day several years later, I took a group of service technicians
from the MIT laboratories to lunch and, during our conversation, one
of them asked, “What does TEKTRONIX mean?” I responded that it was a
term coined from the words ‘technical’ and ‘electronics’ with a stylized spelling, whereupon the manager of the group, a man older than I,
spoke up and said, “Oh no; it means ‘excellence in instrumentation’”!
I nearly choked.
I learned the power of advertising, which I had not respected before.
Two fellows from this group Warren Sheperd and xxxxxxxxxx xxxxx,later
came to work for us as Field Engineers. Warren went to the Florida
Field Office, and xxxxxxxx still calls from Boston from time to time.
One of the benefits of my job was meeting people who were at the fore
front of their fields in several areas of science and technology. As
examples, Archie Tunturi of the University of Oregon Medical School,
who investigated the audio portion of the brains of dogs, and John
Brookhart, who was doing somewhat the same kind of work with cats.
There were amusing stories about Archie. He was intensely interested
in his work and, supposedly on his wedding day, he got an inspiration
for an experiment during the reception, vanished to his lab on the
Hill, and didn’t emerge for several days, to a very angry bride. He
also had two doctorates, a PhD in biology and the other in medicine.
The story is, the faculty gave him the MD on condition that he never
practice on humans.
One day, I received a call from John Brookhart, who had someone to
whom he wanted to show Tektronix; “could I do it”? I picked up a Dr.
and Mrs. John Eccles from Australia (who had discovered the sodium/
potassium transfer mechanism of the synaptic junctions of the nervous
system), and spent the afternoon with them, delivering them to the air
port late in the day. He was later given the Nobel prize for this work
and was knighted by By the Queen.
I also met D.M. McKay (pronounced M’kie) from England, who was a world
authority on computers. I later met another future Nobelist while at
TEK, as well as meeting a third when I was teaching (but those are
other stories).
Later in my career at Tek, when I was Patent and License Administrator,
I was very strict about other companys’ use of the ending ‘-tronix in
their company names, since TEKTRONIX was both copyrighted and register
ed as a trademark. After I left in 1970, the company became more lax
in their enforcement, and the ending ‘-tronix’ became wide-spread in
the high tech industry.
It was at this time (1950) that I became aware, not only of Dal’s estimation of me, but of Howard’s attitude toward me. Dal told Howard that
he wanted to give me a raise, because of the job I had done on the cat
alog and other activities; Howard refused (for whatever reason I don’t
know). In any case, Dal later (after I was working in another depart
ment) told me that he had taken a cut in his own salary to give me the
raise he thought I deserved. He was an excellent boss, and I was very
fond of him.
During this time, Tek was approached by Sperry Gyroscope for infringing on a patent by Leonard Isbister, who had invented the idea of including a signal delay line in the amplifier circuit of an oscilloscope; it delayed the presentation of the signal on the sweep until the sweep was well started. Bill Webber asked me to do some research on the matter, but I was unable to find anything helpful to us.
In May of 1951, I again went to San Francisco to a another Neeley
exhibition of our equipment. It was also about this time that we
dropped our New York distributor, and opened our own offices to cover
the same territory. Jack Cassidy and Ed Bauder, both former friends
of Dai’s, were hired from outside TEK to specifically man these offices.
It was also about this time that we began to experience the pain of
dealing with government bureaucracies; for some reason, the Air Force
could not purchase the large order from the Air Training Command
directly from us, it had to go through an intermediary. Lockheed was
chosen by the Air Force and, in June of 1951, I flew to Los Angeles
to work out the deal. What a mess! We had dealt with Lockheed as a cus
tomer many times, but this was government business and had to be done
their way.
When we began to ship the instruments of this order, I took the first
half-dozen to the Portland Airbase in my own car and loaded them on a
B-26 bomber for delivery.
A further example of the difficulty of doing business with the government came about over a trivial matter; we received an order from the Air Force for several thousand terminal boards as found in one of our oscilloscopes. These were simple little bakelite boards, maybe 2″ by 5″ (and so described in the order), with a number of small metallic posts on each side, to which various electronic components were to be soldered. It was simple (we thought): we simply made an extra large production run of these boards and boxed them up, ready for inspection. The inspector (an Air Force officer) came and, first thing, whipped out his little steel ruler, measured and said, “These don’t meet specifications. They deviate too much,” (a few sixty-fourths of an inch!). We explained that accuracy in size had nothing to do with their function, and they did meet our specifications. Too bad. They had to meet Air Force specifications, and we had to make a special producion run which met Air Force specifications. We never -ever -took another parts order from a government agency.
By this time, we were living on the Charming Way property, and Tek had
purchased property at the intersection of Barnes Road with the Sunset
Highway and had completed building a new twenty-two thousand square-
foot plant there.
In the late summer of 1951, I made a trip to various businesses and
other organizations in Washington, Idaho, and Utah. We combined it
with a personal side trip to Yellowstone Park and Logan, Utah, where
we had lived during the War. The Navy was conducting its early work on
adapting nuclear propulsion to submarines at their facility in Arco, Idaho, and I visited the Idaho Falls office. Also, a Neeley field engineer (who had graduated from Utah State University at Logan) had told me on one my trips with them, that the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had established an operation on The Promontory, a peninsula extending southwad into Great Salt Lake from the north. Because of our
several months in Logan at Utah State Agricultural College (now USU),
where I and several hundred sailors and marines had learned elementary
radio and the use of electronic instruments, my wife and daughter
visited with old friends from that time, while I took off for The Promontory to find this unknown AEC facility. There was simply nothing there, on either side of the peninsula! I never did find out where the Neeley man got his information. (I did find the monument commemerating the joining of the railraods at Promontory.)
The new TEK plant was far enough along that the move was made while I
was gone. On my return, I made preparations to enter Reed College for
my senior year, and my wife was hired to work on the switchboard even
ings. Her first day there, she parked just outside and around the cor
ner from the front door, When she stopped it was about two inches too
late and she toppled a low wall around a planter box being built next
to the building. Someone placed a sign there the next day, ‘Margie,
don’t park here.’
At Reed, I planned to write my thesis on simple computers, with Archie
Tunturi as my adviser.