Donor Wall A Reality (Click photo for full size, and again to magnify) We want to thank Rod Gilbert, an ex-Tek ME, who is also an accomplished woodworker, for the marvelous job he did on building the Donor Wall for our Museum. Another donor who will be identified later, just qualified for his name to be [Read the Rest...]
The Grind
New Tek Cartoon found in 524AD manual
Phil Crosby a current vintageTek volunteer discovered a new Tek Cartoon (A pinup girl in a bathing suit) in the manual of the 524AD he is refurbising for the Museum’s TV Equipment Display. Unfortunately, this manual is on microfische and I cannot scan this until I find a hard copy of this manual. The manual was a 10/63 [Read the Rest...]
vintageTek Donor Wall nears completion
The Museum erected our Donor Wall yesterday to Honor our many wonderful donors who have made the museum a reality. We are awaiting only the brass plaque with our color logo (1) and the brass name plates honoring our donors (2): We are planning a ceremony to honor our donors and present them with a momento [Read the Rest...]
vintageTek Donations can now be done via our website www.vintagetek.org
vintageTek is now set up to accept and process donations on our website www.vintagetek.org . You can find a DONATE NOW button in the LH Column on every page except the Blog Page: Click on the DONATE NOW button; Select Amount to Donate Donate We use PayPal to Process Donations, but you do NOT NEED [Read the Rest...]
Tek coffee cup collection donated to Museum
This month ex-Tek Linda Morrisson donated her extensive coffee cup collection to the vintageTek Museum. I was surprised to even find one I commissioned for the Mobile Calibration Team, consulting for Ed Vaughan in the Service Division at Merlo Road in 1987. Thank you Linda. Ed Sinclair
Jim Williams – analog circuit designer
Jim Williams an analog circuit designer, Tek aficionado, and author, passed away from a stroke in June 2011. The San Jose Mercury News just published an article on Jim and his workbench that was world renowned. It has been enshrined at the Computer History Museum in Mt View, CA. Jim was an analog design engineer [Read the Rest...]
Co-author of Nanoscale Memory Device Article visits Museum
Saturday we had a visitor accompanied by his son. The father had several Tek friends, owned several Tek scopes, and was a career geologist. His son, Will Gannett, is a Ph D candidate in Physics attending Berkeley. As any proud father might, dad had us Google an article his son co-authored: Nanoscale Reversible Mass Transport Memory. Nanoscale Reversible Mass Transport [Read the Rest...]
Early Cathode Ray Tube Department Photos
I have created an Adobe Acrobat file of 23 Early CRT Department Photos we would like identified so we can post them on our website. Since we have a very active ex-employee group from CRT that meets regularly, I have circulated these to all employees invited to the meeting on November 15th Home Town Buffet [Read the Rest...]
Winning With People Author – Oregonian Article
Marshall Lee, Pacific University History Professor, is interviewed by the Oregonian on a date unknown (approximately 1986) regarding his work with Tektronix. Marshall told me that Earl Wantland hired him to create a Tektronix corporate archive, and only later was there the idea to publish a book. The vintageTek Museum has a copy of a [Read the Rest...]
Planting High-Technology Seeds Tektronix’s Role in the Creation of Portland’s Silicon Forest
I have requested permission from Heike Mayer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech, for permission to reprint her article Planting High-Technology Seeds Tektronix’s Role in the Creation of Portland’s Silicon Forest on our website. As many of you know, she was a Doctoral Candidate at PSU, and became known for [Read the Rest...]
Transcript of Howard Vollum 1984 Video Interviews
Howard Vollum agreed to sit down for three videotaped interviews regarding Tektronix History in 1984. They were conducted by Jim Castles, the lawyer who drew up the Tek incorporation papers in 1945 and 1946, and years later became Tektronix General Counsel. The interviews were conducted in three different sessions, April 20th, 1984, May 8th, 1984, [Read the Rest...]
vintageTek Is Reprinting “My Years At Tektronix”
vintageTek is reprinting My Years At Tektronix 1945-1953. Miles was an original Tektronix Founder, along with Howard Vollum, Jack Murdock, and Glenn McDowell. The lawyer drawing up the incorporation papers was Jim Castles, who later joined Tektronix as General Counsel. My Years At Te… By Miles Tippery Book Preview This softcover book can be purchased [Read the Rest...]
Richard Lincoln Ropiequet
Richard L. Ropiequet died of a stroke on April 25,2011 in Grass Valley, CA with his devoted family surrounding him. Born in St. Louis, Mo., and educated in Illinois, he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering in 1944 and was immediately drafted into the Navy as a radar instructor for the Pacific fleet. In [Read the Rest...]
IBM Customer Engineering Manual of Instruction – Tektronix Oscilloscopes
The attached 1960 document: IBM Customer Engineering Manual of Instruction – Tektronix Oscilloscopes, was recently discovered by Pete Lancashire and called to our attention. This was produced by IBM in August 1960 and was a step-by-step tutorial on scopes, and covers the Tektronix Models 310 through 545A, and the plug-ins B, C, CA, D, and [Read the Rest...]
C. Norman Winningstad
I have moved this News Article to the Blog post on 10/26/11 because I want it available from the blog page E.S. When we began design of this new website our departed friend and colleague C. Norman Winningstad had recently died. I felt it would not be proper to take this article down until the [Read the Rest...]
Managing Director – Museum EE Academy For pre-Teens
The vintageTek Museum in Portland, OR would like to open the Nomination process for a Managing Director of a Saturday Academy for what is being referred to internally by various names, from the Geek Academy, EE Academy, to the vintageTek Museum – Academy of Engineering . The purpose is to begin training fifth and sixth [Read the Rest...]
Breakthroughs throughout push scope to 1 Ghz
With the recent donation by Chris Curtin of the cutaway 7104 micro-channel-plate CRT, I made a call for 7104/mcp information via ex-Tek gateslist, and John Addis immediately responded with the attached Electronic Design article from 1-18-1979 by Hans Springer. Some very descriptive figures and explanations of the challenges are included in the article you can [Read the Rest...]
Engineering News Wanted
vintageTek has received a number of Engineering News publications for our Library. The intact ones are dated from 1978 with a front cover title Engineering News and were Company Confidential at the time. We are curious about two things. First the format of Engineering News appears to be almost identical to later Technology Report, and since their date date preceed Technology [Read the Rest...]
Technology Reports Wanted
vintageTek has received a number of Technology Reports for our Library The intact ones are dated from 1982 through 1985 with a front cover title TEK Information For Technologists and were Company Confidential at the time. The full issues we have are creme colored, and a number of articles were extracted from other versions that [Read the Rest...]
Bob Anderson 1966 article: The Storage Story
I spoke with Bob Anderson yesterday, and we will soon be making an announcement of an accolade he will be receiving for his invention of the DVST – Direct View Storage Tube. We are attaching his article which appeared in the Spring 1966 Employee Publication Tek Talk. The Storage Story Ed Sinclair
John Kobbe recollections: Tek 500 Series Developments
John Kobbe recently jotted down his recollections of Tek’s development of the 500 Series oscilloscopes. Starting with the 310/315 he charts the evolution of many developments, including Howard Vollum’s desire to incorporate plug-in vertical amplifiers, and build our own CRT’s and stop using our competitors’ tubes. Internally we long suspected Dumont and RCA were shipping [Read the Rest...]
Magnificent Grand Opening
Our Grand Opening was very successful following the excellent article appearing on the Front Page of the Business section of the Oregonian Thursday September 15, 2011. We had over 200 visitors, with donations exceeding our highest expectations. Visitors started arriving ahead of the 9am opening on Friday with many notable ex-Teks. One of the first [Read the Rest...]
Museum Grand Opening September 16, 2011
vintageTek, a Museum for vintage Tektronix equipment and memorabilia from the Tek heyday 1946-1985 will open for Public Viewing Friday September 16, 2011 at 9am. Public Hours will be Fridays and Saturdays only until our Volunteer Cadre is fully determined.Technical Volunteers have been working on Wednesdays since 2010, repairing and refurbishing instruments for display. The [Read the Rest...]
Pentrix Acquired by Tektronix
Pentrix, a manufacturer of Spectrum Analyzer plug-ins for the Tek 530/540 Series was acquired by Tektronix about 1964. They first designed the L10 for NASA. Following the acquisition, they designed the 1L20 and 1L30, and later the 1L5. These successes were followed by many other designs in what eventually became Frequency Design Instruments (FDI). We [Read the Rest...]
TV’s Mr. Wizard Demo’s Tek Scope on NBC TV
A Story that explains the background and filming of the movie Ask Mr Wizard, The Oscilloscope was published in Tekweek July 21, 1961. Rick LeForge, Field Engineer at Tek’s Long Island office, was present at the show rehearsals in New York City. Mr. Wizard was a half hour telecast each Saturday afternoon. His program was [Read the Rest...]
Tektronix' Court of Claims case 'est finis'
The January 19, 1979 the TekWeek headline reads: Tektronix’ Court of Claims case ‘est finis’.View Here The lawsuit was filed by Tektronix in February 1961. The U.S. Government – Army Signal Corps and US Air Force – awarded contracts for the Tektronix 535 and 545 to Hickock electrical Instrument Company, Cleveland; and to Jetronics, Inc [Read the Rest...]
Frank Hood’s Nickname
Frank Hood became so famous internally for his great movie productions at Tektronix, beginning with The Tek Spirit, that he became known as “Cecil B. DeHood” amongst his colleagues! Jim Cook recalled this nickname in a 2010 discussion over lunch. Ed Sinclair
The Vollum cathode ray oscilloscope
According to Frank Hood in a 1985 Biography he wrote: “The first mention of Tektronix and the oscilloscope was in the April 1948 issue of the magazine ELECTRONICS. It was not called the 511 but only called “The Vollum portable cathode ray oscilloscope”
Logan Belleville Moves to MIT Radiation Lab in WW2
In Howard’s 1984 Interview, Jim Castles asks him if Logan Belleville ever worked at MIT and Howard could not recall. In my recent meeting with Logan’s significant other, Holly Black Belleville, she said Logan was Secretary of the local IRE (IEEE?) when WWII broke out, and he and several others from Portland moved to MA [Read the Rest...]
Wanted Volunteers to Record TEK History
I awoke the other morning at 3am worried that so much Tek History is slipping through our fingers as we discuss a piece here and a piece there, I wanted to provide some way to collect and archive this information. We have the technology, but I am fast losing the bandwidth to do much about [Read the Rest...]
Selecting and Restoring A Classic
Stan Griffiths has given vintageTEK permission to reprint his classic book “Selecting and Restoring a Classic” by Stan Griffiths, W7NI 1992. We will publish a Second Edition soon, adding it to our inventory of gifts for vintageTEK Donors. Ed Sinclair