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The museum remains closed to Covid-19 per Oregon State executive order 20-12 but there is a lot to explore on our website. Our volunteers are staying busy behind the scenes.
April 2020 was the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. One of the enabling key technologies for Hubble is the CCD (charge-coupled devices) imagers. Tektronix was one of the early developers of CCD imagers as part of their Integrated Circuits Organization (ICO). By 1986 Tektronix had developed a 2048x2048 array with application in astronomy and medical imaging.
The 1990 issue of Focus On Tek Volume 6 Number 3 features an article titled "Morley Blouke: Helping Hubble See" on CCDs and their application on Hubble. The article states that Tektronix is working on a second-generation CCD called the Space Telescope imaging Spectagraph.
In 1993 the CCD Products Group was spun out of Tektronix to form Scientific Imaging Technologies, Inc. (SITe). SITe developed the CCD for coverage of the 305 - 1000 nm region for the space telescope imaging spectrograph (STIS) instrument. Thus technology developed at Tektronix found its way onto the Hubble Space Telescope.
Our Photo of the Month for May comes from the Spring 1967 TekTalk. It shows John, a profoundly-deaf boy, receiving speech therapy instruction at Portland's Tucker-Mason Oral School. From the article: 

"Words come hard to the child who cannot hear; unlike us, he has no pattern to copy. But, at Tucker-Maxon Oral School in Portland, a Tektronix 564 storage oscilloscope provides that pattern. Here, profoundly deaf children from 3-1/2 years up are learning to form sounds and phrases by matching their voice "pictures" with those of the teacher-using the 564's capability to store two waveforms on separate halves of its split screen. In speech-and-hearing schools, the storage scope is proving an exceptionally helpful tool; in some cases, it has enabled youngsters, in minutes, to form phrases that they'd never been able to speak."

The 564 storage oscilloscope with a Type 2A61 differential amplifier and 2B67 time base plug-ins was a Tektronix donation to the school.
The first oscilloscopes produced by Tektronix were monolithic instruments each with their own mechanical package and complete circuitry. Howard Vollum thought there was a better way and proposed the concept of a plug-in for the unique characteristics and circuitry. The 531 oscilloscope was the first plug-in oscilloscope and accepted the soon to be called letter series and 1 series plug-ins.

Pentrix, an electronics company in Brooklyn, NY, developed the L10 spectrum analyzer plug-in for the Tektronix 530/540 family of oscilloscopes. Tektronix acquired Pentrix in 1964 and the three founders Arnie Frisch, Morris Engelson, and Larry Weiss moved to Beaverton. Morris Engelson recently wrote a personal perspective of his journey to Tektronix which is on our "Tektronix Gets Into The Spectrum Analyzer (SA) Business: The Story Behind The Story, Behind The Story" page. It is an interesting read of the early days leading to the formation of Pentrix and the acquisition by Tektronix.
Last month we mentioned a volunteer was working on restoration of our 517 oscilloscope. The 517 was a breakthrough product as it pushed the limits of high speed analog design using distributed amplifiers with a total of 130 vacuum tubes. According to Frank Hood in his story The Early Days Of Tektronix, "Our best prediction at that time was that there were only about 30 to 50 people in the whole world who had need of a scope with 60 to 100 megacycle bandwidth. As it turned out, when we brought out a higher speed scope, people were able to design equipment of greater bandwidth and needed even faster measuring instruments. The cycle was regenerative. Having faster, more accurate measuring tools created a demand for even more measuring tools. We eventually sold several thousand of this instrument."
The restoration is not yet complete but the oscilloscope is now operational.

We know of no other working 517 oscilloscopes in existence. This will be a great addition to the museum's exhibits.
Our Instrument Library has been available for some time and has been under utilized. However, with the Covid-19 shutdown  we recently loaned an oscilloscope to a Portland State University student so they could have a hands-on experience while studying on-line. We think this is a great opportunity and have reached out to local universities to spread the word. Pass the word if you know of students who could benefit from a loan of test and measurement equipment.
Our Tektronix in Movies and Shows page is a favorite with viewers sending us new sightings. Tektronix instruments are also shown in a number of historic films so we've started a new page Enabling Customer Success. This page links to various historic films, many of which are on YouTube, that feature Tektronix products used to enable customer success. Check it out and be sure and send us any new sightings. These should be professional historic films highlighting some product or technology breakthrough that feature Tektronix products. We are not looking for many of the amateur videos of product comparisons, tear downs, or instructional use.
We have sold vintageTEK museum T-Shirts for a number of years and recently changed vendors with a new design. Show your pride in the museum and help promote and support the museum by purchasing your vintageTEK museum T-Shirt.

They are now on sale on our eBay store which is open aduring the shutdown but with slower shipping time.
Encourage your friends to sign up for our monthly newsletter.

We continue to regularly enhance our web site with new documents and photos. Recent additions and enhancements are:

1956 Tektronix Advertisements
1962 Tektronix Advertisements
1966 TekTalk Symposium on Computers
1970 Anniversaries has new content
422 Oscilloscope has new content
History of Tektronix has new content
TekTalk has new issues
Tektronix Standards 1967:
  Abbreviations to Terms
  Terms to Abbreviations
  Glossary of Technical Terms - Electronics

If you have an item, story, documentation, photos, or videos to donate, please contact us. If you would like to volunteer, also please contact us. Our regular email is on our home page.

Please do not reply to this newsletter as this email is not monitored.

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