Laurence "Larry" Spitters is an American industrialist and investor who co-founded Memorex. Spitters began his career as an investment banker with Blyth & Co. in 1954 and worked on

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

before transferring to Blyth's office in San Francisco, California. During his tenure at Blyth he was a member of the underwriting and

investment banking Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated wit ...

department and was engaged in the origination, underwriting, and syndication of issues of corporate securities for public distribution, private placement of securities with institutional investors, and evaluation of companies involved in merger and acquisition transactions. In 1958, he joined Ampex Corporation in Redwood City, California, a firm whose financing he had assisted while previously employed at Blyth & Co. As Assistant to the Vice President and Treasurer at Ampex, he spearheaded Ampex's initial public offering (IPO) in 1959. In addition, he led Ampex's study to merge with Orr Industries, a magnetic tape manufacturing affiliate. In 1960, he was made Ampex's Assistant Treasurer where he worked closely with the firm's founder

Alexander M. Poniatoff Alexander Matveevich Poniatoff (russian: Александр Матвеевич Понятов, tr. ''Aleksándr Matvéjevič Ponjatóv''; 25 March 1892 – 24 October 1980) was an American electrical engineer. Poniatoff was born in 1892 in Russkay ...

, particularly in the company's merger with Telemater Magnetics, Inc., a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of magnetic cores, buffers, and memories for data processing and computer systems.

Memorex

In 1961, Laurence (Larry) Spitters founded Memorex Corporation in Santa Clara, California, along with three engineers from Ampex ( Arnold T. Challman, Donald F. Eldridge, W. Lawrence Noon) in order to enter the precision

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

market. Memorex was the first company to manufacture chromium dioxide

cassettes Cassette may refer to: Technology * Cassette tape (or ''musicassette'', ''audio cassette'', ''cassette tape'', or ''tape''), a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback ** Cassette single (or "Cassingle"), a music single in the ...

in substantial volume. In addition, Memorex entered the

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

systems business by first establishing its presence as a supplier of products that were plug compatible to IBM

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

systems and then using its established sales and service capabilities to offer complete computer systems. Memorex's disk drive division, led by Alan Shugart, produced the

Memorex 650 Memorex Corp. began as a computer tape producer and expanded to become both a consumer media supplier and a major IBM plug compatible peripheral supplier. It was broken up and ceased to exist after 1996 other than as a consumer electronics brand ...

in 1972, the first read-write

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

drive. The Memorex 650 had a capacity of 175kB, with 50 tracks, 8 sectors per track, and 448 bytes per sector. While Memorex successfully competed in the IBM plug-compatible disk storage and communications products market, a series of extremely aggressive pricing and product actions by IBM attacked Memorex's equipment businesses and resulted in lengthy antitrust litigation against IBM. A consumer products division established in 1970 made Memorex a household name with the "Is it live or is it Memorex?" advertising campaign from the Leo Burnett agency which featured jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald and a shattering wineglass (now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution). During the 1970s, Memorex produced

cassette tape The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...

s which were marketed vigorously through heavy television advertising. Spitters resigned as Memorex's President, Chief Executive Officer, and as a Director of the Company effective April 26, 1974, the date of the Annual Meeting.

Honors

Spitters received an honorary degree from

Santa Clara University Santa Clara University is a private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California. Established in 1851, Santa Clara University is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California. The university's campus surrounds the historic Mis ...

and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Western Michigan University. He served on the

Board of Trustees, and on the Board of Directors of

ALZA Corp. Alza Corporation was a pharmaceutical and medical systems company. Background Founded in 1968 by Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni; the company's name is a portmanteau of his name. Alza was a major pioneer in the field of drug delivery systems, bringin ...

, The Children's Health Council, and The Embarcadero Publishing Company, publisher of the '' Palo Alto Weekly''. Degrees: * M.B.A.,

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

* J.D., University of Michigan Law School * B.A., Western Michigan University Spitters has been a financial contributor to

American Conservatory Theater The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school. History The Ameri ...

.American Conservatory Theater, program notes, "The Rivals" by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816)

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References

* ''Corporate Histories Collection'', Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94043 {{DEFAULTSORT:Spitters, Laurence Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Harvard Business School alumni University of Michigan Law School alumni Western Michigan University alumni American businesspeople Silicon Valley people People from the San Francisco Bay Area fr:Memorex it:Memorex