CRT Experiment #490
An individual in SW Portland found two CRTs in their attic and contacted and donated them to the museum. One is a unique dual gun CRT that was never put into production. Note the CRT shield has an additional rough cutout. for the second set of gun pins.
A closeup of the label provides more details. The CRT is from April 17, 1964. This CRT was designed by Connie Wilson who was well known for her design of the 547 CRT. The No Geo Control indicates there is no geometry element to correct for the guns being off axis.
This experimental CRT was built using the T5810 gun used in the 581 and 585 oscilloscopes. This gun design featured coiled distribution deflection plates which enabled a system bandwidth of 85 MHz, higher than either the 555 or 556 dual gun oscilloscopes.
What is interesting is the box the CRT was in has a hand written T557 nomenclature. Was this part of an investigation into designing a 557 dual gun instrument? We also have some early documentation of a dual beam 552 concept. Tektronix was obviously investigating future dual gun oscilloscopes.
Since this CRT was designed in 1964, we were curious as to who was associated with this CRT and kept it. Records showed the former owner of the house was Keith Taylor. A check into our archives indicates Keith Taylor was a design engineer in the Conventional Oscilloscopes group in 1964 and likely helped to evaluate this CRT in engineering.
Keith Taylor died in 2023 and his obituary can be found here.