Larry Weiss

Lawrence Harold Weiss (b. February 6, 1936 – d. August 2, 2018) founded Pentrix with Arnold Frisch and Morris Engelson.

He worked at Tek from June 1964 until about 1968.

After leaving Tektronix, Larry went on to found at least one other company, Zygo Industries, once located on Boones Ferry Rd in Portland, and after being acquired, May 1, 2011, is now located in Fremont, CA.

Larry has a son, Adam, alleged to live in San Diego according to Zygo Industries - see https://www.zygo-usa.com/usa/

“ZYGO has been making and marketing communication aids since 1974,” explained Larry Weiss, President, ZYGO Industries. “Bottom line is ... we know and use DECtalk as the primary synthesizer for our business and, although we look at and listen to some of the new ones, we are still fixed on DECtalk.”

From a video of Larry discussing the origins of Pentrix:

It was a time of transition from vacuum tubes to transistors”, Larry said. The company the three of them were working with, Polarad (based in NYC), did not “want to go there”, so the three of them left Polarad and started Pentrix with the intent to build a small transistorized spectrum analyzer, something like what became the Tektronix 491. They were not well-funded.

They made the plug-ins with the intent of getting enough money to build the spectrum analyzer.

They got blank plugin parts for 530/540 series plugins and that was their initial contact with Tektronix.

But their contact with Tektronix in the NY field office led to the discussions about acquisition.

Patents by Larry Weiss

Page	Office	Number	Title	Inventors	Company	Filing date	Grant date
Patent US 3274505A	US	3274505A	Series transistor circuit with selectively coupled stages	Arnie Frisch • Larry Weiss • Morris Engelson	Tektronix Inc	1964-02-28	1966-09-20
Patent US 3325754A	US	3325754A	Resistor-diode attenuator	Arnie Frisch • Larry Weiss • Morris Engelson	Tektronix Inc	1964-05-13	1967-06-13

Photos

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  Arnie Frisch, Larry Weiss, and Rich Nute