Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as
oscilloscope
An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...
s,
logic analyzer
A logic analyzer is an electronic instrument that captures and displays multiple signals from a digital system or digital circuit. A logic analyzer may convert the captured data into timing diagrams, protocol decodes, state machine traces, a ...
s, and video and mobile test protocol equipment.
Originally an independent company, it is now a subsidiary of
Fortive
Fortive is an American diversified industrial technology conglomerate company headquartered in Everett, Washington. Fortive was spun off from Danaher in July 2016. Mitchell Rales and Steven M. Rales, Danaher's founders, retained board seats ...
, a
spinoff from
Danaher Corporation
Danaher Corporation is an American globally diversified conglomerate with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The company designs, manufactures, and markets professional, medical, industrial, and commercial products and services. The company's ...
.
Several charities are, or were, associated with Tektronix, including the Tektronix Foundation and the
M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust in
Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, located in Clark County. Incorporated in 1857, Vancouver has a population of 190,915 as of the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Was ...
.
History
1946–1954
The company traces its roots to the electronics revolution that immediately followed
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. It was founded in December 1945 as Tekrad. The name was similar to that of a California company, Techrad, so in 1946, the four partners,
Howard Vollum
Charles Howard Vollum (May 31, 1913 – February 5, 1986) was an American electronics engineer, businessman, and philanthropist in Oregon, United States. He was the co-founder of Tektronix Corporation, and endowed the Vollum Institute.
Back ...
,
Jack Murdock and Miles Tippery, who had both served in the
Coast Guard
A coast guard or coastguard is a maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to ...
, and accountant Glenn McDowell, formed Tektronix, Inc. Each contributed an initial $2,600 for equal shares.
Howard Vollum had graduated in 1936 from
Reed College
Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...
with a degree in physics and a keen interest in oscilloscopes, then worked as a radio technician at
Jack Murdock's Murdock Radio and Appliance Company (M.J. Murdock Company) prior to the outbreak of war, during which he served in the
Signal Corps. Following the founding of Tektronix, Vollum invented the world's first triggered
oscilloscope
An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...
in 1946, a significant technological breakthrough.
[Mokhoff, Nicolas. (11/20/2006)]
RF design contest marks oscilloscope's birth.
''EETimes
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
''. Retrieved on December 9, 2007. This oscilloscope—refined and developed by Tektronix—was the model 511 produced from 1947 to 1953. The model 511 was a triggered-sweep oscilloscope. The first oscilloscope with a true time-base was the Tektronix Model 513.
The leading oscilloscope manufacturer at the time was
DuMont Laboratories. DuMont pioneered the frequency-synch trigger and sweep.
Allen DuMont
Allen Balcom DuMont, also spelled Du Mont, (January 29, 1901 – November 14, 1965) was an American electronics engineer, scientist and inventor best known for improvements to the cathode ray tube in 1931 for use in television receivers. Seven y ...
personally tried the 511 at an electronics show and was impressed, but when he saw the price of $795 (equivalent to $ today), which was about twice as much as his equivalent model, he told Howard Vollum at the show that they would have a hard time selling many.
Tektronix was incorporated in 1946 with its headquarters at SE Foster Road and SE 59th Avenue in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
,
["Tektronix, Inc., contributes as state’s largest employer". ''Hillsboro Argus'', 19 October 1976.] just six blocks from Murdock's first family home. In 1947 there were 12 employees. Four years later, in 1951, Tektronix had 250 employees.
Murdock and Vollum were known
humanitarians
Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional ...
and sought to operate their business as one might run a large and caring family. In 1978, Tektronix was named by authors Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, et al., as among ''The 100 best companies to work for in America'' in their book of the same name.
By 1950, the company began building a manufacturing facility in
Washington County, Oregon
Washington County is one of 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon and part of the Portland metropolitan area. The 2020 census recorded the population as 600,372, making it the second most populous county in the state and most populous "Wash ...
, at Barnes Road and the
Sunset Highway and, by 1956, had expanded the facility to .
The company then moved its headquarters to this site, following an employee vote.
A detailed story of Howard Vollum and Jack Murdock along with the products that made Tektronix a leader in oscilloscopes can be found at the Museum of Vintage Tektronix Equipment.
1955–1969
In 1956, a large property in
Beaverton became available, and the company's employee retirement trust purchased the land and leased it back to the company.
[ Construction began in 1957 and on May 1, 1959, Tektronix moved into its new Beaverton headquarters campus,][ on a site which came to be called the Tektronix Industrial Park.][Manaton, Michael E. (August 4, 1994). "Tektronix began 'Silicon Forest' boom". '']The Oregonian
''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 185 ...
'' (MetroWest edition).
In the late 1950s (1957–58), Tektronix set a new trend in oscilloscope applications that would continue into the 1980s. This was the introduction of the plug-in oscilloscope. Started with the 530 and 540 series oscilloscopes, the operator could switch in different horizontal sweep or vertical input plug-ins. This allowed the oscilloscope to be an adaptable test instrument. Later Tektronix added plug-ins to have the scope operate as a spectrum analyzer, waveform sampler, cable tester and transistor curve tracer. The 530 and 540 series also ushered in the delayed trigger, allowing to trigger between a sweep rather than at the beginning. This allows more stable triggering and better waveform reproduction.
In 1961, Tektronix sold its first (possibly the world's first practical) completely portable oscilloscope, the model 321. This oscilloscope could run on AC line (power mains) or on rechargeable batteries. It also brought the oscilloscope into the transistor age (only a Nuvistor ceramic tube was used for the vertical amp input). A year and a half later the all transistor model 321A came out.
The 560 series introduced the rectangular CRT to oscilloscopes. In 1964 Tektronix made an oscilloscope breakthrough, the world's first mass-produced analog storage oscilloscope the model 564. Hughes Aircraft Company
The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of Hughes Tool Company. The company was known for producing, among other produ ...
is credited with the first working storage oscilloscope (the model 104D) but it was made in very small numbers and is extremely rare today.
In 1966, Tektronix brought out a line of high frequency full function oscilloscopes called the 400 series. The oscilloscopes were packed with features for field work applications. These scopes were outstanding performers often preferred over their laboratory bench models. The first models were the 422, a 16 MHz bandwidth and the 453, a 50 MHz bandwidth model. The following year the 454, a 150 MHz portable. These models put Tektronix well ahead of their competitors for years. The US Military contracted with Tektronix for a model 453 "ruggedized" for field servicing. The 400 series models would continue to be popular choices in the 1970s and '80s. In addition the styling of the 400 series would be copied by Tektronix's competitors. 400 series oscilloscopes were still being used as of 2013.
1970–1985
The company's IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
, when it publicly sold its first shares of stock
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
, was on September 11, 1963. In 1974, the company acquired in Wilsonville, Oregon
Wilsonville is a city primarily in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States. A portion of the northern section of the city is in Washington County. It was founded as Boones Landing because of the Boones Ferry which crossed the Willamette River at ...
where it built a facility for its imaging group.[ By 1976, the company employed nearly 10,000, and was the state's largest employer.][ Tektronix's 1956 expansion and, in 1962, ]Electro Scientific Industries
Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. (ESI) is an American high technology company headquartered in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, specifically in Beaverton, Oregon, since 2021, but from 1963–2021 it was based in the unincorporated ...
' similar move to Washington County and expansion are credited with fostering the development of a large high-tech industry in Washington County, a number of firms which collectively are often referred to as the "Silicon Forest
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic tab ...
".
For many years, Tektronix was the major electronics manufacturer in Oregon
Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
, and in 1981, its U.S. payroll peaked at over 24,000 employees. Tektronix also had operations in Europe, South America and Asia. European factories were located in Saint Peter's, Guernsey
St Peter's ( Guernesiais: Saint Pierre), known officially as ''Saint Pierre du Bois'' (English: "St. Peter in the Wood") is a parish in Guernsey. It is the centre for the Guernsey Western Parishes which includes Torteval, St Saviour's and the ...
(then in the European Free Trade Association
The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe, European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerlan ...
) until 1990, Hoddesdon (Hertfordshire, UK) and Heerenveen
Heerenveen (, fry, It Hearrenfean ) is a town and municipality in the province of Friesland (Fryslân), in the Northern Netherlands. In 2021, the town had a population of 29,790 (1 January) while the municipality had a population 50,859 (1 July). ...
, Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
(then in the European Common Market). Some oscilloscopes marketed in Europe and the UK were sold under the brand name Telequipment but many in the UK used the Tektronix brand name in the 1960s and 70s.
For many years, Tektronix operated in Japan as Sony-Tektronix, a 50-50 joint venture of Sony Corporation
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
and Tektronix, Inc; this was due to Japanese trade restrictions at the time. Since then, Tektronix has bought out Sony's share and is now the sole owner of the Japanese operation. Under the Sony-Tektronix name, the 300 series oscilloscopes were light weight and totally portable. They replaced the model 321/321A oscilloscopes. Examples of the Sony/Tektronix models were 314, 323, 335 and 370.
During the early 1970s, Tektronix made a major design change to their oscilloscopes. The 5000 and 7000 series oscilloscopes maintained the plug-in capabilities that originally started with the 530 and 540 series; however, the choice of plug-ins was even greater. These scopes used custom designed integrated circuits fabricated by Tektronix. The CRTs were all rectangular and were all fabricated by Tektronix. These oscilloscopes provided on screen controls setting. The 5000 series was the general purpose line while the 7000 series were capable of a wide variety of applications and could accept as many as 4 plug-ins. One model the 7104 (introduced 1978) was a true 1 GHz bandwidth oscilloscope.
Beginning with the firm's first cathode ray oscilloscope
An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...
s, Tektronix has enjoyed a leading position in the test and measurement market. Although its equipment was expensive, it had performance, quality, and stability. Most test equipment manufacturers built their oscilloscopes with off-the-shelf, generally available components. But Tektronix, in order to gain an extra measure of performance, used many custom-designed or specially-selected components. They even had their own factory for making ultra-bright and sharp CRT tubes. Later on, they built their own integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
manufacturing facility in order to make custom ICs for their equipment.
Tektronix instruments contributed significantly to the development of 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 ...
s, test, and communications
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
equipment and to the advancement of research and development
Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...
in the high-technology
High technology (high tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or the newest te ...
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
industry generally.
Tektronix as time went on fabricated more and more of their electronic parts. This led to very specialized skills and talents which in time led to employees forming new businesses. Some former Tektronix employees left to create other successful "Silicon Forest" companies. Spin-offs include Mentor Graphics
Siemens EDA is a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981 as Mentor Graphics, the company was acquired by Siemens in ...
, Planar Systems
Planar Systems, Inc. is an American digital display manufacturing corporation with a facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. Founded in 1983 as a spin-off from Tektronix, it was the first U.S. manufacturer of electroluminescent (EL) digital displays. Planar ...
, Floating Point Systems
Floating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS), was a Beaverton, Oregon vendor of attached array processors and minisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer Norm Winningstad, with partners Tom Prince, Frank Bouton and Robe ...
, Cascade Microtech, Merix Corporation, Anthro Corporation and Northwest Instrument Systems (NWIS) - later renamed to MicroCase. Even some of the spin-offs have created spin-offs, such as InFocus
InFocus Corporation is an American privately owned company based in the state of Oregon. Founded in 1986, the company develops, manufactures, and distributes DLP and LCD projectors and accessories as well as large-format touch displays, softwa ...
. As Tektronix fabricated more specialized parts, they spread out their product base to include logic analyzers, digital multimeters and signal generators. The TM500 and TM5000 rack mount series was born featuring custom designed test instruments chosen by the buyer.
During this period, Tektronix acquired what were sold as the 8000 and 8002 Microprocessor Development System (MDS), the 8000 being a software development system running editors and cross-compilers with twin floppy disk storage, while the 8002 could be fitted with real-time emulators for several processors including the 8080
The Intel 8080 (''"eighty-eighty"'') is the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. It first appeared in April 1974 and is an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibili ...
, Z80
The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...
and 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small te ...
. These were later replaced by the 8540/8550/8560. The 8550 was a standalone development system capable of being fitted with real time emulation hardware for several different processors. The 8560 emerged just after Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
were able to sell UNIX
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
commercially, and ran a mildly modified version of Version 7 UNIX
Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system. V7, released in 1979, was the last Bell Laboratories release to see widespread distribution before the commercial ...
, called TNIX, supporting 4 or 8 (depending on how many I/O processor cards were fitted) serial terminals, with a special High-Speed Input/Output, based on RS-422, to connect to a remote 8540. There was a hard drive of about 34MB, later increased, and a variable amount of RAM depending on the processor card fitted, which was either a DEC LSI11-23+ or a LSI11-73, which had a wider address bus as well as a higher clock speed. The final upgraded variant was the 8562. The 8540, of which several could be connected to the 8560, contained emulation hardware similar to that available for the 8550, including RAM cards, Trigger Trace Analyser, 1 or 2 processor emulator cards, each with external probe, etc. The 8540 had no software development capability, but worked with the 8560, or other systems such as a VAX
VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...
, which would provide the software development environment. It was unique in its day, in that the serial terminal could be connected to the 8540, on the bench, or to the 8560, and would pass UNIX commands automatically to the 8560, which passed emulator commands back to the 8540 for execution, completely transparently. Thus a complete compile, link, load and emulate session could be run from a UNIX shell script, a facility probably not seen on any development system since. The 8540/8550/8560 supported many 8-bit and 16-bit microprocessor types, with a change of emulator cards and probes, and installation of assembler and possibly compiler software, and did not require any particular code to be linked in to the user's code to facilitate register tracing at breakpoints, a shortcoming of the only real alternative multi-manufacturer MDS of that era, by HP. However, an impressive feature was that by including a special instruction sequence, typically a double NOP followed by a call to a specific address, the emulator would generate a "Service Call" to take whatever action the user required, and continue execution. This for example could allow UNIX to write variables to a log file as commanded by the running program on the emulated microprocessor.
It is not clear at present why Tektronix eventually withdrew from the MDS business, as their products were highly regarded.
1986–2006
Tektronix began to face big challenges to its business structure. In the 1980s, Tektronix found itself distracted with too many divisions in too many markets. This led to decreasing earnings in almost every quarter. A period of layoff
A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing (reducing the ...
s, top management changes and sell-offs followed. In 1994, Tektronix spun off its printed circuit board
A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in Electrical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a L ...
manufacturing operation as a separate company, Merix Corp., headquartered in Forest Grove, Oregon
Forest Grove is a city in Washington County, Oregon, United States, west of Portland. Originally a small farm town, it is now primarily a commuter town in the Portland metro area. Settled in the 1840s, the town was platted in 1850, then incorpora ...
.
Eventually, Tektronix was left with its original test and measurement equipment. Upon his promotion in 2000, the current CEO, Richard H. "Rick" Wills, carefully limited corporate spending in the face of the collapsing high-tech bubble. This led the way for Tektronix to emerge as one of the largest companies in its product niche, with a market capitalization
Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders.
Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by t ...
of $3 billion . However, this failed to prevent it from becoming an acquisition target, and Tektronix was acquired by Danaher Corporation
Danaher Corporation is an American globally diversified conglomerate with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The company designs, manufactures, and markets professional, medical, industrial, and commercial products and services. The company's ...
in 2007.
Major Product Changes—Digital Sampling Scopes. With the advancement in signal sampling techniques and digital processing, oscilloscope manufacturers found a new horizon in the market. The ability to sample the signal and digitize it for real time viewing or digitally store it for future use and maintain the integrity of the waveform. In addition a computer can be integrated with the scope to store many waveforms or instruct the scope to do further analysis. Color enhanced waveforms can be produced for ease in identification.
Tektronix was heavily involved with designing digital sampling oscilloscopes. In the mid-1980s, they quickly replaced their analog oscilloscopes. Their 400, 5000 and 7000 series oscilloscopes were replaced with a new generation of digital oscilloscopes with storage capability, the 11000 and TDS series. The 11000 series were large rack mount laboratory models with large a flat CRT face and had touch screen, multiple color, and multiwaveform display capability. They were still plug-in units and could accept the older 7000 series 7- plug-ins and the new 11000 series 11A- plug-ins. The TDS series replaced the 300 and 400 series portable line. They had the same panel layout but with enhanced storage and measuring capabilities. During this period Tektronix would also expand its test equipment line to logic analyzers, signal generators etc.
By the mid 1990s the use of the CRT was dropped and Tektronix started using LCD panels for display. The 11000 series would be replaced by the MSO (Mixed Signal Oscilloscope) which featured a color active matrix LCD. The TDS continued but with LCD panels starting with the TDS-210. In the TDS models, the lower priced models replaced the last of the 2000 series analog scopes and featured monochrome display while the higher end models were color LCD models which were more like the older 400 series scopes in performance. Spinoffs of the TDS was the TBS storage scope series. Later Tektronix would replace the 200 mini oscilloscopes with the TH series hand held digital oscilloscopes. All TDS and spinoff series with LCD display are totally portable (light weight and can run AC or on batteries).
2007–present
On November 21, 2007, Tektronix was acquired by Danaher Corporation
Danaher Corporation is an American globally diversified conglomerate with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The company designs, manufactures, and markets professional, medical, industrial, and commercial products and services. The company's ...
for . Prior to the acquisition, Tektronix traded on the New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
under the symbol ''TEK'', the nickname by which Tektronix is known to its employees, customers, and neighbors. On October 15, 2007, Danaher Corporation tendered an offer to acquire Tektronix for cash a share, which equated to a valuation of approximately . The deal closed five and a half weeks later, with 90 percent of TEK shares being sold in the tender offer.
Also, as part of its acquisition by Danaher, the Communications Business division of Tektronix was spun off into a separate business entity under Danaher, Tektronix Communications.
The digital oscilloscope line that was introduced in the 1990s (MSO, TDS, TH series) are still being manufactured in some form.
On February 1, 2016, Tektronix introduced a new logo design, replacing a logo that had been in use since 1992, and indicated a shift in strategy to offer measurement products tailored for specific fields such as computing, communications and automotive. Danaher spun off several subsidiaries, including Tektronix, in 2016 to create Fortive.
Tektronix Video, commonly known for their waveform monitors, was merged with Telestream
Telestream, Inc. is an American privately held computer software company.
History
The company, founded in 1998, is headquartered in Nevada City, California with personnel in France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Canada and the UK.
Telestream prov ...
via an agreement with Fortive on April 25, 2019.
Production of oscilloscopes has moved to China in recent years.
Early oscilloscope models
For individual model history Tektronix and Tektronix Collectors has complete details. Just go click to the reference number next to the Tek Product Series. You will be directed to the latest link.
# 7000 series oscilloscopes and plug-ins 1970-1985
# 5000 series oscilloscopes and plug-ins 1970-1985
# 2000 series portable oscilloscopes (1978-?)
# 500 series oscilloscopes and plug-ins 1946-1970
# 400 series portable oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers 1966-1989
# 300 series portable oscilloscopes 1952-1969?
# 200 series portable oscilloscopes (1975-?)
'Non test' products
Some important non-test equipment Tektronix created and sold include:
* Tektronix 4014
The Tektronix 4010 series was a family of text-and-graphics computer terminals based on storage-tube technology created by Tektronix. Several members of the family were introduced during the 1970s, the best known being the 11-inch 4010 and 19-inc ...
computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...
* Tektronix 405x graphical microcomputers
* Tektronix 408x
Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment.
Originally an independent c ...
graphical minicomputers (original DRADIS of Battlestar Galactica)
* Tektronix FEM181
Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment.
Originally an independent ...
Finite Element Modeling software system
* Tektronix 4115
Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment.
Originally an independent c ...
color raster scan graphics or the TGRAPH emulator
* Tektronix 6130 NS32016
The NS32000, sometimes known as the 32k, is a series of microprocessors produced by National Semiconductor. The first member of the family came to market in 1982, briefly known as the 16032 before becoming the 32016. It was the first 32-bit general ...
workstation series running UTek, a 4.2BSD The History of the Berkeley Software Distribution begins in the 1970s.
1BSD (PDP-11)
The earliest distributions of Unix from Bell Labs in the 1970s included the source code to the operating system, allowing researchers at universities to modify a ...
clone
* Tektronix 4300 Motorola 68020
The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keepin ...
graphic workstation series running UTek, a 4.2BSD The History of the Berkeley Software Distribution begins in the 1970s.
1BSD (PDP-11)
The earliest distributions of Unix from Bell Labs in the 1970s included the source code to the operating system, allowing researchers at universities to modify a ...
clone
* Tektronix XD88
Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment.
Originally an independent ...
Motorola 88000
The 88000 (m88k for short) is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays re ...
graphic workstation running Utek V, another Tektronix Unix based on Unix System V Release 3
* Flatbed plotter
A plotter is a machine that produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting pl ...
s used with Tektronix computers
* TekXPress X terminal
In computing, an X terminal is a display/input terminal for X Window System client applications. X terminals enjoyed a period of popularity in the early 1990s when they offered a lower total cost of ownership alternative to a full Unix workstat ...
s, later sold to Network Computing Devices
Network Computing Devices (NCD) was a company founded in 1987 to produce a new class of products now known as a thin client. It was founded in Mountain View, CA, and when it closed it was headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon.
The corporate founde ...
* '' Phaser'' -branded color computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral machine which makes a persistent representation of graphics or text, usually on paper. While most output is human-readable, bar code printers are an example of an expanded use for printers. Differ ...
s, including their pioneering Solid Ink
Solid ink (also referred to as hot melt ink) is a type of ink used in printing. Solid ink is a waxy resin-based polymer that must be melted prior to usage unlike conventional liquid inks. The technology is used most in graphics and large for ...
models, sold to Xerox
Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...
in 1999
* Television studio
A television studio, also called a television production studio, is an installation room in which video productions take place, either for the production of live television and its recording onto video tape or other media such as SSDs, or for t ...
and video production
Video production is the process of producing video content for video. It is the equivalent of filmmaking, but with video recorded either as analog signals on videotape, digitally in video tape or as computer files stored on optical discs, hard dri ...
equipment manufactured by onetime Tek subsidiary Grass Valley Group, which was spun off as an independent company (and later bought by Thomson SA Thomson may refer to:
Names
* Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin
* Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson
Businesses and organizations
* SGS-Thomson Mic ...
). The Grass Valley is now owned by Black Dragon Capital.
Notable employees
The following notable individuals currently work for Tektronix, or have previously worked for Tektronix in some capacity. This list includes persons who are notable for reasons unrelated to their Tektronix careers.
*Howard Vollum
Charles Howard Vollum (May 31, 1913 – February 5, 1986) was an American electronics engineer, businessman, and philanthropist in Oregon, United States. He was the co-founder of Tektronix Corporation, and endowed the Vollum Institute.
Back ...
: founder, former president and chairman of the board, recipient of the Legion of Merit
The Legion of Merit (LOM) is a military award of the United States Armed Forces that is given for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements. The decoration is issued to members of the eight ...
award for work on radar for England in WW II, noted philanthropist. (See Howard Vollum Award
The Howard Vollum Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Science and Technology is an annual award that was created by Reed College and endowed in 1975 by a grant from the Millicent Foundation, now a part of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust.
...
)
*Moncef Chellouf Moncef or Munsif ( ar, منصف) is a masculine Arabic given name. People named Moncef include:
* Moncef Slaoui, American researcher
* Moncef Belkhayat, Moroccan politician
* Moncef Guitouni, Tunisian psycho-sociologist
* Moncef Marzouki
Mo ...
: Technical writer, engineer , former CEO of quality for European market
*Jean Auel
Jean Marie Auel (; ; born February 18, 1936) is an American writer who wrote the ''Earth's Children'' books, a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores human activities during this time, and touches on the interactions of Cro-Magn ...
: technical writer; author of Children of Earth novels
*Kent Beck
Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American software engineer and the creator of extreme programming, a software development methodology that eschews rigid formal specification for a collaborative and iterative design process. Beck was one of the 17 ori ...
: engineer; Extreme Programming
Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, PD ...
developer
* Tom Bruggere: engineer; later founded Mentor Graphics
Siemens EDA is a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981 as Mentor Graphics, the company was acquired by Siemens in ...
in 1981; 1996 candidate for United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
*James B. Castles: General Counsel
A general counsel, also known as chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO), is the chief in-house lawyer for a company or a governmental department.
In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their ...
; one of three original Trustees of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust
* Ward Cunningham: engineer; Extreme Programming
Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, PD ...
developer, inventor of the wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
* Miller M. Duris: politician who served as mayor and county commissioner
*Barrie Gilbert
Barrie Gilbert (5 June 1937 – 30 January 2020) was an English-American electrical engineer. He was well known for his invention of numerous analog circuit concepts, holding over 100 patents worldwide, and for the discovery of the Translinear Pri ...
: popularized the ''Gilbert cell'', a type of electronic mixer
An electronic mixer is a device that combines two or more electrical or electronic signals into one or two composite output signals. There are two basic circuits that both use the term ''mixer'', but they are very different types of circuits: a ...
* Robert W. Lundeen: Director, CEO
*Vivek Maddala
Vivek Maddala is a four-time Emmy-winning composer who focuses on writing music for feature films, theater and dance productions, and television. He is known for composing music scores for independent movies such as '' Kaboom'', ''Highway'', and t ...
: composer and musician
*Steven McGeady
Steven McGeady is a former Intel executive best known as a witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial. His notes and testimony contained colorful quotes by Microsoft executives threatening to "cut off Netscape's air supply" and Bill Gates' guess ...
: engineer; later Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
Vice-president and co-founder of Intel Architecture Labs
__NOTOC__
Intel Architecture Labs (IAL) was the personal-computer system research-and-development arm of Intel during the 1990s.
History and formation
IAL was created by Intel Vice-president Ron Whittier together with Craig Kinnie and Steven M ...
* Merrill A. McPeak: Director; former US Air Force chief of staff
*Keith Packard
Keith Packard (born April 16, 1963) is a software developer, best known for his work on the X Window System.
Packard is responsible for many X extensions and technical papers on X. He has been heavily involved in the development of X since the l ...
: engineer; X Window System
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...
developer
* Randal L. Schwartz: Perl
Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...
and computer security expert, author
* Earl Wantland: started in Test Department, 1955; elected president, 1971, succeding Howard Vollum; became CEO, 1974
*Norm Winningstad
C. Norman (Norm) Winningstad (November 5, 1925 – November 24, 2010) was an American engineer and businessman in the state of Oregon. A native of California, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II before working at what is now Lawrence B ...
: engineer; founder of Floating Point Systems
Floating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS), was a Beaverton, Oregon vendor of attached array processors and minisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer Norm Winningstad, with partners Tom Prince, Frank Bouton and Robe ...
, author
*Rebecca Wirfs-Brock
Rebecca J. Wirfs-Brock (born 1953 in Portland, Oregon) is an American software engineer and consultant in object-oriented programming and object-oriented design, the founder of the information technology consulting firm Wirfs-Brock Associates, an ...
: engineer; technical lead for the first commercial Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Ka ...
implementation; author of books on object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pr ...
* Delbert Yocam: former president, COO
COO or coo may refer to:
Business
* Certificate of origin, used in international trade
* Chief operating officer or chief operations officer, high-ranking corporate official
* Concept of operations, used in Systems Engineering Management Process
...
; former COO of Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
*Craig Ryan: Technical writer, author of non-fiction Sonic Wind and film of same title.
*William D. Walker: former president, COO; former President of Electro Scientific Industries
Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. (ESI) is an American high technology company headquartered in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, specifically in Beaverton, Oregon, since 2021, but from 1963–2021 it was based in the unincorporated ...
, former President of Planar Systems
Planar Systems, Inc. is an American digital display manufacturing corporation with a facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. Founded in 1983 as a spin-off from Tektronix, it was the first U.S. manufacturer of electroluminescent (EL) digital displays. Planar ...
, former chair of Tek Foundation, former board of Oregon Graduate Center
The Oregon Graduate Center was a unique, private, postgraduate-only research university in Washington County, Oregon, on the west side of Portland, from 1963 to 2001. The center was renamed the Oregon Graduate Institute in 1989. The Institute me ...
.
*Randall Woodfield
Randall Brent Woodfield (born December 26, 1950) is an American serial killer, serial rapist, kidnapper, robber, and burglar who was dubbed the I-5 Killer or the I-5 Bandit by the media due to the crimes he committed along the Interstate 5 corr ...
: American serial killer.
See also
* Semiconductor curve tracer
A semiconductor curve tracer (also known as a semiconductor parameter analyzer) is a specialised piece of electronic test equipment used to analyze the characteristics of discrete semiconductor devices such as diodes, transistors, and thyristors. ...
* Waveform monitor
A waveform monitor is a special type of oscilloscope used in television production applications. It is typically used to measure and display the level, or voltage, of a video signal with respect to time.
The level of a video signal usually cor ...
/ Vectorscope
A vectorscope is a special type of oscilloscope used in both audio and video applications. Whereas an oscilloscope or waveform monitor normally displays a plot of signal vs. time, a vectorscope displays an X-Y plot of two signals, which can r ...
* First Tech Credit Union, originally Tektronix Federal Credit Union
* Tektronix Analog Oscilloscopes
* List of companies based in Oregon
This is a list of companies based in Oregon. Oregon is the ninth largest by area and the 27th most populous of the 50 United States. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Oregon in 2010 was $168.6 billion; it is the United States's 26th wealthies ...
* SyntheSys Research
References
Further reading
* ''Winning with People: The First 40 Years of Tektronix'' by Marshall M. Lee. Published by Tektronix, Inc., October, 1986.
External links
*
The Spirit of Tek
Documentary produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) is the primary television and radio public broadcasting network for most of the U.S. state of Oregon as well as southern Washington. OPB consists of five full-power television stations, dozens of VHF or UHF tra ...
archive of Tektronix vintage catalog PDFs
{{Authority control
Electronics companies of the United States
Electronic test equipment manufacturers
Manufacturing companies based in Oregon
Companies based in Beaverton, Oregon
American companies established in 1946
Electronics companies established in 1946
2007 mergers and acquisitions
1946 establishments in Oregon
Danaher subsidiaries
Video equipment manufacturers