Tek Engineering Circa 1962-1964
All of instrument design from July 1951 until March 1966 was in Building 81.
The location of personnel in this document is primarily in the productive years of 1963 and 1964.
The following picture is of the east-facing wall looking NW with the Building 81 (Sunset South) entrance in its NE corner (center).
Building 86 (Sunset North) is visible in the right half of the photo. It was located north of Building 81.
In the above photo dated June 1964 is the east wall of the “Sunset Plant”, Building 81, looking NW. The building was so named for Sunset Highway located a few dozen feet behind the photographer.
About 50 feet south of the north wall and running west was a hall where there were three engineering groups in July 1963. The bays for each group were about 50 feet deep and extended from the hallway to the nearest outside wall. There were two main hallways, north hallway and south hallway, both running east to west. Between the two hallways were located (from east to west) Howard Vollum’s office, Engineering vice president, Bill Polits’ office, Instrument Engineering Manager (Jack Rogers), Engineering administration (Dick Rhiger), Legal (Jim Castles), New Product Introduction (Deane Kidd), the cafeteria, and the parts room (Herb Crawford) extending to the model shop.
The north hallway ran east to west from behind the receptionist. The first engineering bay was Bob Rullman’s group working on the 544, 546, and 547.
Conventional Scopes (544, 546, 547)
Bob Rullman - Group Manager - horizontal sweep, sweep switching
- Gene Kauffman - trigger
- Al Allworth - 1A4
- Tom Beach
- Keith Taylor - main vertical amplifier
- Jack Rogers - sweep (also apparently was also Engineering manager)
John Gates - running the 545B project
Possibly Dave Barton, a very good engineer who left in about 1964
647 Group
West of Rullman’s group was the 647 group, initially led by Oz Svehaug. After September 1963, Oz left Tek for health reasons and the group was run by Oliver Dalton.
- Gene Andrews - 10A2 Gene probably had numerous other contributions
- John Larson - technician
- Les Larson - 10A1 (no relation to John)
- Larry Mayhew - 10B1 (Larry Mayhew disclaimed any role, but he may have taken Jim Godwin’s 11B2 and cut it down to single time base)
- Vaughn Weidel - technician-probably environmental testing
- Carl Battjes - main vertical amplifier
- Jim Godwin - 10B2
- R. Michael Johnson (later known as Bob Johnson)-Z axis, Xtal controlled calibrator, high and low voltage supplies
- Larry Dillard (left about mid 1963 to form Argonaut Electronics, making Electrometers, later other ventures mostly in optics)
- Jim Knapton - horizontal amplifier-also manager of Digital Systems Group
Low Frequency & Biomedical Systems Group
This was the next bay west of the 647 group. Russ Fillinger was the lead.
- Mel Holznagel - not sure of project, may have left this group in mid 1963
- John Addis - 1A7
- Bill Barnes (technician)
- Don Calnon - modifying 502
- John Dureka early storage scope CRT circuitry
- Tat Lam
- Larry Mayhew - 2A61 (finishing in mid 1963 when he joined the 647 group)
- Roy Hayes - 3A3
- Walt Petersen was studying for an MD and advised biomedical group part time
- Dick Stack - technician
- Gary Vance (joined about 1966)- 502A
Marketing
West of LF and Biomedical and possibly on both sides of the hallway was marketing.
The west end of the building extending to the south hallway was the model shop.
Unknown manager Model Shop (took up width of the building from North Wall to the South Hall)
- Les Wold
- About 20 machinists, metal working equipment.
Going east from the west wall was the south hallway parallel to the south wall. Engineering bays were between the hallway and the south wall.
From the west wall going east was TV-Scan Conversion headed by Charlie Rhodes
- Larry Biggs - 1A2 for the 547 group
- Doug Dickie
- Stan Baker (technician?)
- Phil Crosby
- Stan Tate (technician?)
- Victor Kong (later)
- Steve Roth (later)
- Walt Lowy (technician, later)
Sampling Group
The next bay east was the Sampling Group, led by Al Zimmerman. Norm Winningstad may have had an office in this area.
- Gordon Long - stand alone pulsers
- George Frye - sampling heads
- Ray Underwood
- Gene Cowan - pulser heads
- Chuck Donaldson
- Chuck Edgar
- Stu McNaughton
Accessories Design Group
The next bay east was Accessories Design, led by Cal Hongel until mid 1963, then by Wim Velsink and later Ken Holland for years.
- R. Michael Johnson
- Marv DeSautel (technician)
- Bill Lukens
- Bill Peek
- Bob Beck
- John Roberts (known later as Jack Roberts)
- Hans Springer
- Bert tenKate
Digital Systems
The next bay east was Digital Systems, led by Jim Knapton.
- John Bowne
- John Griffin
- Paul Buchco (technician)
- Bob Herb
- Bud Kraker
- Milt Smith
Marlow Butler The front bay, was Mechanical Design
- Maury Merrick - Accessories and Camera Development
- Dwaine Romine
- Jay Chido - Mechanical Instrument Design
- Bud Deibele, Project Engineer
- Frank Maniatis, Project Engineer
- Leon Prentice, Project Engineer
- Henry Bahrs - front panels
- Dave Morin
- Glenn Powers
- Don Thorneycroft
- Dick Swanson, Project Engineer
- Eldon Hoffman
Gail Morris - Industrial Design
That may have brought us back to the front of the building.
Many people are missing from this page, and possibly even whole groups. If anyone can provide the missing information, please contact the administrator of Tekwiki.
Engineering Evaluation (Evaluation of new designs and engineering help) was located in Sunset North (45.5090 -122.7749) (Building 86). Building 86 was about 100 feet north of Building 81 and is partially visible in the above photo to the right of the Building 81 corner entrance. At the time, CRT Engineering was likely also in Building 86.
In about 1965 Wim Velsink suggested the formation of an Advanced Development group as most of the above products had been introduced.
This group was to research the ideas of Howard Vollum, mostly having to do with human interface such as a trigger control that allowed you to roll over a sine wave and have the trigger slope change a the top of the waveform. (This was actually introduced in some 7000 series sweeps, but was not popular.) Another was to have the trace intensity increase during rapid rise and fall so more of the waveform could be seen. Another project was to have the amplifier gain seek a full screen display. This was done in the 3A5 plug-in but also was not popular.
John Kobbe had the corner office (next to the outside south wall) and ran the group, presumably reporting to Wim Velsink.
Others
Norm Winningstad might have been in Sampling at that time, but not in a design capacity
Cliff Moulton had left in 1962 or early 1963.