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History The company traces its roots to the electronics revolution that immediately followed World War II. The company’s founders C. Howard Vollum and Jack Murdock invented the world’s first triggered oscilloscope in 1946, a significant technological breakthrough. They founded Tektronix in southeast Portland, Oregon, which they later moved to the suburb of Beaverton following an employee vote. Its IPO, when it publicly sold its first shares of stock, was on September 11, 1963. For many years, Tektronix was the major electronics manufacturer in Oregon, and in 1981 U.S. payroll peaked at over 24,000 employees. Tektronix also had operations in Europe, South America and Asia. Tektronix European factories were located in St. Peter Port on the island of Guernsey (then in the European Free Trade Association), and Heerenveen, Holland (then in the European Common Market). For many years, Tektronix operated in Japan as Sony-Tektronix, a 50-50 joint venture of Sony Corporation 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. Some Tektronix employees have gone on to create other successful Silicon Forest companies,include Mentor Graphics, Planar Systems, Floating Point Systems, Merix Corporation and Anthro Corporation. Tektronix instruments have enjoyed a leading position in the test and measurement market for decades, basically beginning with the firm's first cathode ray oscilloscopes. Much like Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix had a company policy of designing equipment of the very highest quality. Their equipment was quite expensive, but usually unmatched in performance, quality, and stability. Most test equipment manufacturers built their oscilloscopes with off-the-shelf, generally available components. But Tektronix, in order to get 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 design and manufacturing facility in order to make IC's with many times the performance of generally available ones. Tektronix instruments contributed significantly to the development of computers and communications equipment and to the advancement of research and development in the high-technology electronics industry generally. Employee relations The early Tektronix was often described as exemplary in its employee relations practices. Rules were played down and trust and reliance on each individual's judgement were emphasized. Vacation and health benefits were unusually liberal, and a generous profit sharing plan returned 35% of corporate pre-tax profits to employees. This worked well for Tektronix employees during the years that profits were substantial. Non test products Some important non-test equipment Tektronix had created and sold include: Slump 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 lay-offs, top management changes and sell-offs followed. (In 1994, Tektronix spun off its printed circuit board manufacturing operation as a separate company, Merix Corp., headquartered in Forest Grove, Oregon.) Eventually, Tektronix was left with its original market of 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 of $3 billion as of April, 2006. Notable people who worked for Tektronix 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 careers at Tek. technical writer; author engineer; Extreme Programming developer engineer; later founded Mentor Graphics in 1981. Was the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in 1996, but was defeated in the general election by Senator Gordon Smith. Tektronix General Counsel; original Trustee of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust engineer; Extreme Programming developer, inventor of the wiki engineer; later, with Fred Tinker, founded Rodgers Instruments LLC. engineer; later co-founded Mentor Graphics in 1981. engineer; later Intel Vice-President and co-founder of Intel Architecture Labs Director; former US Air Force chief of staff engineer; later co-founded Mentor Graphics in 1981. engineer; founder of Floating Point Systems, author former Tektronix President, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Board Director; former COO of Apple Computer. See also Further reading | ||||||||||
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