This Hewlett-Packard discussion of Tektronix comes from INSIDE HP: A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF HEWLETT-PACKARD FROM 1939–1990 by John Minck, pages 88-89. John Minck retired in 1995, after a 37 year career with Hewlett-Packard Company.

HP 150A Oscilloscope
HP Journal, April, 1956

In the 50‘s, many of the independent HP Reps carried the Tektronix (Tek) product line along with HP. Tek‘s oscilloscope products were top of the line, and had built an enviable reputation for superb quality and reliability. The inside product design was a dream, with a special ceramic standoff resistor mounting strips and carefully dressed wiring harnesses.

 

Tek made a decision around that time to take their product sales "direct" meaning no reps. They began on one coast by writing letters of resignation from their business contracts, which were typically a 30-day notice by either party. In the case of HP, and the world-wide sales representatives, we understood that most of those business relationships were on the basis of a handshake and personal friendship, not a written contract.

 

One after another, as the rep was cancelled, Tek brought in their own people to set up a sales organization. Well, the loss of a general-purpose product line like scopes was serious matter to the HP reps. They prevailed on Dave to agree to design a line of oscilloscopes to compete with Tek. And thereby began decades of frustrating competition. The first two products were a good news-bad news situation. The HP 130A was a slick dc to 300 kHz low-frequency scope that filled a niche that Tek didn't occupy at that time.

 

But the product that was meant to take Tek head on was the HP 150A. It was a plug-in modular design with dc to 10 MHz, dual channel, which at that time was deemed general-purpose. To avoid a me-too verdict, HP designers chose to use a bottom drawer plug-in which made the plug-ins non-compatible with the Tek design. Some innovations on the CRT made it easier on the eyes. There was a clever "beam-finder" button, which alleviated the nagging problem with the Tek units of losing the trace when overloaded.

 

But the poor HP 150 suffered the worst reliability problems. First off, even if perfect, customers would have trouble believing that anyone, even HP could measure up to Tek. They were like Gods. The Tek salesmen had all been trained to be scope repairmen first, salesmen second. Tek President Howard Vollum believed that each and every FE must be able to align a scope and most carried small screwdrivers to tweak the amplifier frequency response of a bench unit as they talked with customers.

 

It took some years for the HP 150 to become more reliable. Meantime, HP was making more innovations as time went on, such as internal graticules on the CRT. This feature was made possible by the decision to build a CRT manufacturing facility in Colorado Springs when the factory moved out there in about 1960.

 

The Tektronix challenge
In the oscilloscope business, HP was the interloper. Tektronix was a major force in the instrument scopes ever since Howard Vollum conceived of a fast, triggered scope just after WWII. Their product design was superior, a soft brushed, and chemically-treated front panel, ultra-clean layouts of control knobs, and an interior layout of components that was clean enough to qualify for an industrial design prize. Before the advent of printed circuit boards, and the cost efficiency they allowed, most wiring was done with hookup wire, hand soldered to vacuum tube sockets, and wires which traveled to insulated spacers which held the circuit components like resistors and capacitors, etc.

In HP products, the spaced component boards were called Kingman cards, named after an HP mechanical tooling engineer, named Rufe Kingman. It was not an unthought-of irony that his first name was similar to Rube Goldberg. He was the comic character who invented complex kluges which had to go through 15 steps of rolling ball bearings and trip levers in order to light a cigarette. The Kingman machine punched holes in a phenolic board, sheared off a short strip of tin-plated brass, punched it through the board holes, and crimped it, leaving a top slot to receive the component such as a resistor for soldering.

 

Since Tek was ahead to begin with, and HP was playing catchup, it was a frustrating game. HP pioneered in some low frequency scopes like the HP 120 and 130, which were quite adequate for many jobs, and had real easy readability and features like a simple button ―beam-finder, which Tek had never thought of. But soon, they reacted with their own competitive versions.

 

Larry Johnson recalls, ―One technology where HP did innovate was in scope storage tubes. Storage tubes had been around (although not at HP) for some time before HP started using them. I do believe that HP made all of its storage tubes. I believe HP's first tubes were made by Don Hammond's guys down in Bldg 1L. The manufacturing boss and middle-level technology brain was Bert Squires, but the top-level brain belonged to Bill Kruger, a short, gray-haired, quiet, easy-going engineer. Later on, in Colorado facility, Allen Smith was the eventual boss.

 

As it worked out, Tek matched virtually every move HP made in scopes. Customers were willing to wait for Tek to come up with an answer. The frustration of the Oscilloscope Division was great through the years, because although they worked hard and diligently, it was tough to attack the perceived leader. HP, along with a Long Island company called Lumatron, invented sampling scopes and yet were matched a year later by Tek. HP perfected a practical time-domain-reflectometer (TDR) and that was matched soon after, although HP‘s technology in RF/Microwave ensured that our TDRs were more comprehensive.

 

At great expense, HP installed a CRT tube production plant at Colorado Springs, to give us quality CRT tube advantages. One result of this capability was that we pioneered display tubes with internal graticules, which provided a highly-improved reading accuracy. But, fighting Tek still remained a very frustrating job for people such as Bill Terry and Hal Edmondson, who had relatively long careers in the HP scope divisions.