Tektronix CRT - a Look Back

when we started out with our 511 oscilloscope which was the breadwinner you might say if Tektronix the first one we were buying the tubes from our competitor tubes that we've used at that time we're Dumont in RCA and so we were sure that we were getting there seconds there calls the big problem was orthogonal T and geometry and those really are the cathode ray tubes and if you were familiar with rise time measurements and you start from the left portion of the screen to the right you want a nice straight line straight vertical line well these tubes that they were sending us were so poor that many of those tubes would reach X we just have to send them back and we pretty sure that we're getting seconds and so that was one of the big reasons that we decided we had to to get into her own own CRT manufacturing operation in Howard volume around 1952 I think decided we had to do something the technology that in the process is the weave we're doing in late 53 54 was pretty much lab oriented it was a laboratory operation pretty much we had to get to the point where we could predict yields we had to get to the point where we had the the specifications and the dimensions and the technology down pretty well repeatable so that we could start and then getting the volume up so we could justify purchasing capital equipment we've eventually evolved in our technology our knowledge of the process is the point where we could start to invest money in capital equipment enabling us to produce larger quantities in at one time and I'll give an example of that that was for example settling the phosphors on the bulb well that was all hand operation one at a time or maybe two at a time well as we got the volume up we could then do maybe 10 at a time by making special decanting tables and so forth likewise stem sealing of guns that it's sealing this gun inside of a 2-inch glass envelope we would do that one at a time maybe we could do one every five or six minutes by hand in a ceiling lathe and so you multiplied out - if they allow you you're up to maybe oh ten an hour would be pretty good you know that's that's any rejection course so we finally bought a nice lesstm ceiling machine and wow we could do three or four hundred a day and it repeatably and better quality when I came to a tetra niché's I was hired to set up an automatic stem sealer before every cathode ray gun was sealed on a horizontal led by hand so my job was to try to automate glass processes in CRT and the highlight I have to say is all the automation that I work with and processes that came up with is the biggest highlight is the 1990 we introduced a stem sealer that is operating at 99.5% yield which was unheard of in the past CRT was expanding at that point and tremendous pressure on growth they just developed the CRTs for the 581 and the 519 and there was a tremendous opportunity and high speed oscilloscopes and they needed new CRTs for that word a work environment was very friendly and it was a it was encouraging for it especially in those in those early years not just that yerevan in those first 10 years so really encouraging for innovation or for give you a lot of freedom the entire work act that ethic was was different here than I'd been used to I mean in England you try and get a job done you go down to the machine shop and they look for every excuse not to do the job for you and I came here and everybody was just falling over themselves to help you it was an entirely different different way of working yeah we were very fortunate that we had our own captive tooling shop and we had tremendously creative guys like like known as Tucker and Orville with E and a whole crew of really talented machinists and equipment builders and one of the things that they did a really good job that was building the jigs that held all the parts to keep all the parts in proper alignment for making electron gun and then we Tektronix pioneered the use of these automated rodding stations where all four rods put on same time this again help control the tolerances very precisely and it was it was the fact that we had our own captive shop that allowed us to do that no one else in the industry was doing anything like that Tech was a fun place to work all of tectonics was in the two buildings along the sunset highway they had just moved into building 19 on the Beaver Dam property here a short time before and the main part of the activity was still along the sunset highway one of the cornerstones of Tektronix products is I've been CRT and the technology that we had in CRT the development of the technology the manufacturing technology of the technology has been a great barrier to market entry for our competition over all the years when we came on board with our post deflection accellerating system which was a spiral and better quality gun so the guns were were very accurate glass rod structures deflection plates which were out of stainless steel and were heavier and better alignment in our writing fixtures we we had a tube that was really superior and eventually RCA and Dumont just gave up because when the five 30s and five 40s got into the field there was no contest there are several different breakthroughs and milestones that Tektronix made what the further first was the use of the helical PDA the first deflection accelerator and that that was pioneer that Tektronix was a first company to do that successfully commercially it had been done in the laboratory but we were able to do it commercially next big breakthrough I'd say was the internal graticule and in the light of internal graticule another one was the ceramic envelope which freed us from reliance on glass manufacturers back in the East Coast and we could and we also it also gave us the ability to tool and design a new CRT for a new oscilloscope very quickly we didn't have this long lead time working with the glass companies that was terrific and it was that that enabled us to do the lighted graticule next big breakthrough is probably the simplified storage tube invented by Bobbie Anderson and I can remember the day that Bob Anderson the inventor grabbed me by the arm and said come into this little closet and building 86 and we slid the pocket door closed and he said staring to this microscope and he says watch this and so I'm watching in there these blobs are phosphor on a screen and he said here goes and he turned the thing up and it got very bright for a minute and of course legging field microscope is very bright and then he turned it dark and then the trace went zipped across there and as I watched it I watched it this trace that he'd written on their tiny little little and disappeared and he said what do you see and I said well I said I see you tried to write a trace on there but it's not hanging in there it's kind of disappearing he says watch again so I watched again and he did the same thing it got bright and dim again which was the eraser mode and then he wrote the trace and it dribbled away again and disappeared I said it's still not staying there it's going away no no he said there's an invention there of course but being a young still wet behind the engineer ears engineer I couldn't see it right off so I said let's do it one more time so he did it one more time I said I'm not sure what you're trying to show him and he said don't look at the blobs of phosphor he said look in between the blobs he said there on the bare surface you'll see individual particles of phosphor and they're maintaining the charge they're staying green he said that's the invention and if we can figure out how to do it all over the screen we'll have a storage tube when that product came out the only people making storage oscilloscopes at that time was a huge Instruments company and it was a very expensive tube and a very expensive instrument and when we came out with a 564 simplified by stable storage to a person with a huge oscilloscope could be who had a tube that was burned out need to replace the storage tube and they burn out frequently he could buy a whole new Tektronix oscilloscope the whole thing for less money than it cost him - replaces - we just gobbled up the lion's share of the market technologically the thing that that was outstanding for me was to be the guy that was given the opportunity to design the tube that was going to utilize Bob Anderson's bi-stable target and to work on that project and that was that was that was we got to couple the brand new technology of that by stable storage target with the first use of the ceramic envelope so we got to introduce two new two new and radically different approaches to how you build a CRT in that one project it's just like a beehive I mean we were so busy there were new tubes being introduced all the time this was right in the heyday at when Tech was just growing leaps and bounds and you couldn't hire enough people fast enough to get the products out was a time when many of the key products Tektronix relied on were differentiated by CRT technology one perspective I had that I don't think was common to everyone the CRT plant was an awareness of how the industry outside Tektronix looked at her CT activity and the thing I was proud of is that routinely our CRT operation would sign up and commit to deliver products we didn't yet know how to do that I knew that our competitors had decided were too risky and that they declined to take on so that an element of pride I had was our willingness to commit to do things that our competitors were afraid to try and that for the most part our track record was fairly solid about eventually feeling the products now this put us into situations where a lot of people were gifted with interesting manufacturing challenges low yields ongoing process problems but as a consequence we're able to differentiate not just oscilloscopes with very high performance products but our floors into graphic terminals were all originally dictated on our non-standard CRT technology and in fact our first hardcopy offerings were non-standard CRT is used to work with dry silver paper so if you look at the early 80s you can see that the breadbasket of Tektronix was basically supported by investments we made in the past in non-conventional CRT technology 79 1700 CRT that I helped design that was a sort of a milestone for tech where we I think it was is started the end of HP competition in the analog oscilloscope you know they they brought out their 250 megahertz scope and we were bringing out our 7000 series and within six months we had a 500 megahertz and you know and they essentially gave up after after that transistors came along and they tried develop transistorized oscilloscopes and they came put the screws to us and said we need more vertical sensitivity so we began to look for methods that would allow us to get more vertical sensitivity and I worked on the development of the first scanning span ssin tube which contained with the frame grid mesh type tubes and then Lloyd Sweetland came in from Hill a Packard and they fiddled with it there and he helped to work on a similar kind of project the tube that I developed and it ended up going into a product for the air force called the 647 and later on one of the other engineers cut the front end off of it to make it shorter and a smaller display it became the 453 which was the most popular product that Tektronix ever made they sold more of those than anything they'd ever sold before milestones I to me from my personal milestone I think of the yield improvements that we were able to make at the same time we're bringing in so many new cathode ray tubes you have to realize it's that we were still we were had high-volume operation but we also had very low volume operation doing the same thing the same time which is very difficult to do repeatedly and get good yield so we had our high volume cathode ray tubes for producing the same time bringing in smaller quantity smaller volume cathode ray tubes which required only I say a diversification of our talent well a result protector on expose that Tektronix could continuously make advancements in the performance of their oscilloscopes because the key to making the advancement was coupling of the driving circuitry with the display device that could continually operate at a higher and higher frequency channel and lower and lower sensitivities they were fun times you know and that we were doing a lot of exciting things in the 70s we started using computers in design and we had a lot of fun in those days trying to develop computer algorithms and programs so we were doing computer aided design before it was given the acronym CAD and spent a lot of time and effort on developing these programs writing the partial differential equations installed them for the electric or magnetic fields and watching the trajectories of the electrons and from that for instance we went through an optimization process with a program that we work with and we built this really strange wall band design that went into the 7830 that allowed us to increase the uniformity of the field that more than doubled the writing speed of that stretch tube there was a lot of variety of product being built and most of the operation was all pretty manual and the volume was expected to grow tremendously with the introduction and some of the low cost oscilloscopes and that was a real driver for starting high volume line was to be able to automate the processes and produce larger volume at the same time the 2,400 series instruments were being introduced and so those CRTs for that instrument brought in in parallel with the high bio manufacturing line one of the most memorable experiences I had was the introduction of the 2,400 series in the 2200 series which was over 10 years ago and those products were stand still are in some ways the 2467 products and no one else in the world could build and it was a pleasure to go up in front of customers and demonstrate those products and I remember the someone from Hewlett Packard a manager coming into Ford Motor Company after I had been in showing a 24 65 and he just shook his head he said there's no way we could compete with this product and it's the the CRTs and those products were better than and are better than any CRT in the world you know the job of an oscilloscope is to capture a signal and display it the kind of a CRTs we had in the 2465 in the 2200 series allowed us to do things differentiate our products better than anyone else in the world and you can see that in a product like the 2400 series that differential advantage has lasted for over ten years in those products and today we still sell millions of dollars of 2465 it's sort of the last product line that still has significant revenue off of analog oscilloscopes and CRTs well by the time I was in the storage tube production the the old bi-stable storage tube was fairly well ingrained in the production processes and you know we were making them quite frequently but the big thing that we worked on when I was here was the the introduction was the development and the introduction of the 19 inch storage CRT I mean that was quite an event between the engineering community the manufacturing people the manufacturing engineering getting the equipment in place getting the processes established getting the tube that we could actually get to work that was quite an event and then once we did all that then the market just went gangbusters on us and we were always behind the power curve in terms of capacity and our ability to deliver and we we had quite an exciting time during that time period it was always the catch-up mode the technology that was developed in our CRT operation has been used by to spawn other technologies or to you know driving force behind of the technology such as the graphics terminal display which was the cornerstone for our whole starting of Wilsonville and also it's been a major contributor to the Sony Trinitron CRT and Sony would have never had that if haddem technology was developed in our CRT operation there was every character in the world that worked it I mean they all had different backgrounds different flavors and the place took on the characteristics of those people and it was a real love can do go get him not too many rules applied to or a deer to type environment and we got a lot done because of it there were a lot of really good people here and well went on when I first came Egon Elsner was the manager of engineering ERT engineering and he was really a brilliant guy he'd worked a lot on the 519 and its derivatives along with some other things and had done a really good job he was one of the people that was made a key employee and left at a fairly young age is one of the initial millionaires of Tektronix when all of that turned into gold for each one of them I work with or volson quite a bit or was a good engineer and did a good job in what he did when I first come ed Trebek was new to the company IDI was starting up the manufacturing engineering process for CRT and trying to put some sort of handle on what we're doing to get control of that and it did a great job of putting that together over the years and held a number of important positions of what we were doing thing that's most gratifying to me is some of the people that I hired since I as in some of the opportunities I had to work as a manager I was able to hire some really good people and and help them develop and then the the thing that's gratifying is to see them go on to really super careers I think one thing that was particularly impressed me was the enthusiasm that existed within CRT during those years probably highlighted by the the HP CRT wore I can remember the many hallway discussions brainstorming that went on it just it wasn't a quiet place to work but it was very active and it was very enjoyable and I think CRT always have the ability to use its most valuable resources which is in my opinion the people and I came here as a high school dropout was encouraged by people to get my GED I did that went on to college classes and was one of the first five people in the technician training program so when you go to a company as a high school dropout and you get into a technical field I think the company has done a lot for you and building your confidence and making opportunities available I came from Europe and didn't have any English so I had to learn the language the culture the people the company and when I learned all about that or some of it it was just a most wonderful place that I could ever come to work for there were none left technician so they wanted to set up a program that people who hadn't maybe finished college who could work from inside the company could work into and they took five people this was when ed srebnick was here and put us in a two-year program with no minimum schooling week we just all started even it was a rotating program where you worked so so long in each strategic area and made all your contributions and at the end of the two years if you were worth your salt you had a job and we all got jobs I do believe that we are a very very good team of people and everybody is self-motivated here and we do our thing really without being told as to what to do I always believed them high quality and it was very hard to accomplish it but the last three years with the cooperation of all people management technicians engineering production we increase the yield to unbelievable heights with cooperation dedication and hard work the tube sets that we built really were far superior in an analogue world as we move to a digital world our emphasis has been designing on the digital equivalent of what an analog oscilloscope would do all the way from the capturing it to the displaying of it and to date there are just a few things left that an analog oscilloscope can do that a digital oscilloscope can't do and we're in the process today of sort of jumping through those last final hoops of digital technology to make a digital oscilloscope look like an analog oscilloscope basically there's two reasons for the closure the business one is that the technology is changing with digital technology and the new instruments that we've brought out incorporating digital technology we no longer need a high performance CRT and so we're able to go out and buy an inexpensive raster scan CRT and achieve the performance that we want to take instruments with with the digital technology and so that's one reason is the technology shift and then the second reason is the Tektronix strategy and we basically moved into a couple years ago with the restructuring of becoming a more highly leveraged company rather than being vertically integrated and so this this closure is part of that strategy where we're no longer going to be vertically integrated and built CRTs I certainly feel some personal sadness to see through the changing of the gaurd going on on the other hand there's nothing about it that's inappropriate and in many ways would be unrealistic to believe that it's something that can be resisted I think the more relevant issue is that the talents abilities perspectives and insight that we've developed in the people of the business are effectively deployed in the new business challenges that we have and I believe that some of the attributes of the people in CRT have been very strong for the business and ways that extend well beyond the CRT technology itself for example I've not seen another plant with the history of continuous improvement that I've seen maintaining the CRT operation if we could inculcate that same kind of spirit and capability and the rest of the operations I think the business benefit that we see would be normos so I'm looking forward to this as an opportunity to see some of the talent that we've developed become seeds that we can disperse across the greater business I think you should be proud of yourselves you've done made a significant statement in the marketplace with the kind of quality and the performance that we've had in our in our products and you know in summary you know should be commended for the fantastic job that you've done over the decades and particularly thank the people that have participated in the last two years recognizing that the business is going to be shut down and their continued emphasis on doing what's best for Tektronix and continuing to build high quality product and support the company in that decision even though it means a lot of personal change for them I think that as we hit this this change point we're recognizing the closure of the CRT plant that the the people within the CRT plant have an awful lot to be proud of in terms of what they've historically contributed the company and that it's apparent to me that many of our core highly leveraged and financially rewarding opportunities have been supportable only because we've had this kind of capability in place I don't think that there's a group of people have more to be genuinely proud of than the people who made the CRT plant functional during the last 25 or 30 years you

Channel: VintageTEK Museum

Views: 12,655

Rating: 4.9851303 out of 5

Keywords: Tektronix, Oscilloscope, cathode ray tube

Id: COSxkzm_rms

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2016

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[u/ScottColvin]

https://web.archive.org/web/20210705065906/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSxkzm_rms

Neighbor I talked to in his 60's was telling me he grew up across the street, and was neighbors with one of these guys growing up. So i grabbed it and it was so old I figured I would see what archive.org was all about. Happy 4th of July 2021, save all the data.

Seems a shame to lose a great video like this.

I wonder if he recognizes any of these folks?