Introduction
This is the history of Tektronix, Inc., founded in 1946 and now exactly forty years old. As company histories go, this effort is not within the mainstream. Traditionally, company histories have fallen within several broad categories. Most popular is the hero-worshiping history, which seeks to embalm the founders and heroes of the company in the preservatives of a story centered on their accomplishments and their infallible judgments. The reader will not find such an account here. A second genre is what we might call the "match of technology" histories. These accounts are centered on the company's spectacular technical accomplishments, what could be termed product-centered histories. Our focus will be broader than mere technology. A third variety is the purely chronological account. Bursting with minor detail, and relying heavily on annual reports, such efforts plod through the company's past with all the enthusiasm of the recruit slogging through a twenty-mile march. Although our account follows a chronological structure, the reader is spared the indignity of wading through all forty years of Tek's history year by year. There is a fourth kind of company history, the "high school annual" history, the aim of which is to insure that every person above the rank of file clerk gets mentioned. Those hoping to find such a galaxy of minor stars must look elsewhere.
What follows is none of the above. Rather, this is an interpretation of the first forty years of Tektronix. It combines elements of the first three approaches, but it is an interpretation. As such, it makes no claim to absolute truth. For those who lived these events there may be much here with which to quarrel. But consider this: to the individual soldier, the battle is no larger than what he sees, to the platoon leader not much larger; but as we move up the chain of command, our perspective changes and the battle takes its place within the wider context of the entire war. So it is that when the veteran of D-Day reads about the invasion years later two things happen: be is troubled that he does not recognize more of the battle he knows he survived, but at the same time he begins to appreciate where his individual effort fit into the whole.
The history of Tektronix is a story which can best be understood in terms of human qualities. It is the story of genius, the engineering genius of Howard Vellum and a handful of other engineers who came to Tektronix, and the organizational genius of Jack Murdock, who single-handedly recruited the men who became Tektronix at the end of World War I. it is the story of courage: the courage of the original founders and their tiny band to keep pushing during their first year before any instruments had gone out the door, and the courage to buck the tide, taking on RCA and Dumont for control of the scope market. It is the story of determination: the unwavering determination of the four founders to maintain the informal egalitarian environment of their company, no matter how large it got, no matter what the consequences. It is the story of stubbornness: the stubborn reliance on technology over other factors in the design of instruments, as well as in the management of the company, a reliance which from time to time achieved the dimension of arrogance, what we will call the tyranny of engineering. It is the story of growth: the ability of a company to grow, to change with the times, often not as promptly as some might have hied, but judged over four decades dearly the ability of a company to adapt to the changing world around it, a world which, in truth, Tektronix helped to change. Finally, it is the story of principle: the rock-hard commitment to principles of honesty, respect, and fairness, which translated into quality products, but more important into the quality of the Tektronix environment.
Talk to any long-time Tek employee or long-time customer, and a story surfaces which illustrates the sense of principle which permeates Tektronix. The founders of Tektronix were plain-spoken men, not given to embellishing their own accomplishments. It is rating, then, that perhaps the ultimate testament to Tektronix is itself a study in understatement. Mr. A. M. Mallinson, solicitor and senior member of the prestigious London firm of Slaughter and May, has handled the company's legal affairs in Britain and on Guernsey since the late fifties. He has seen Tektronix expand in Europe, consolidate its sales and service operations there, acquire and ultimately absorb an English company. Some of these dealings were difficult, occasionally painful for the people involved. To Mallinson was put the question, "After almost thirty years, from your perspective as the company's solicitor, what kind of company is Tektronix, anyway?" Mallinson's answer will no doubt please those who know Tektronix best: "If one was to divide one's clients between those where, when you looked on the back of the envelopes to see where the letter was coming from, you put it back on the bottom of the pile, or those where you would open the envelope straight away, I'd have no hesitation of opening Tektronix' envelopes."