We provide tours on request, many of which are on closed days. Here are some photos from various requested tours from 2024.
Employees of the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust came for a presentation on the early history of the founders and tour.
“I have only positive feedback to give! The tour was very fun and engaging. I loved how they included more information about Jack Murdock knowing that we would probably be most interested in that part. However, it was also a great opportunity to learn about the history and significance of Tektronix. I especially loved all the instrument demonstrations since I was not very aware of what an oscilloscope did before the tour. Also, the museum workers were very kind and courteous of our time, which I very much appreciated. Overall, I would recommend this tour to everyone at the Trust, as it gave me a great insight into life and passions of Jack Murdock and his associates.” – MT
Jamie Wakefield and Ralph Sanders visited the museum. They worked for Wordsmith who did a lot of marketing and sales literature for Tektronix. In this photo they are holding two pieces Wordsmith created for Tektronix.
As part of the tour, we took them to our marketing and sales literature archives and they were able to find numerous pieces created by Wordsmith. This small paper advertising promotion, also created by Wordsmith, is in our bling cabinet.
Gary Nelson and his wife Suzanne visited the museum and donated the award he received on the occasion of the 250,000th 465 CRT celebration in the Building 50 auditorium. The award consists of a rodded gun mounted on a wood plaque recognizing his role as designer of the 465 CRT. Gary also brought the gold-plated rodding fixture for the T41 CRT gun awarded to Connie Wilson when she first retired. Each CRT used a unique precision fixture which held all the electron gun parts in alignment while 4 glass rods were partially melted and pushed against the support pins of the gun’s elements (hence rodding). These fixtures, fabricated in the Model Shop, were a critical part of Tektronix’s advantage in CRT quality and performance. Gary is seen here with museum volunteer Chris Curtin (right). You can view these awards in a high resolution PDF on our Connie Wilson and Gary Nelson CRT Awards page.
Leadership Beaverton Class sponsored by the Beaverton Area Chamber of Commerce.
"Bonnie and I just wanted to say a big thank you for your incredible tour at the Tek Museum for Beaverton Day for Leadership Beaverton on October 11. We truly wouldn’t have been able to pull off such an amazing day without your help. Networking helps us strengthen a compassionate community, especially in these times, this is very important.
We hope we can continue to meet and work together for future educational events like this."
Members of the Tektronix Product Security team tour.
Tektronix Application Engineer visit
Gavin sent a letter to the museum regarding a school project. The following is an excerpt from his letter and has been edited for brevity and clarity.
My name is Gavin and I am a 7th grader at California Middle School in Missouri. Our teacher is helping us understand the importance of small businesses in the USA. We have been researching successful small businesses in our country and vintageTEK really stood out to me!
I think it is very interesting that you guys are doing STEM projects. I, myself, am a huge fan of electronics and have an interesting curiosity for old things. I hope you guys have another good year in 2024 with great regards for your contributions.
Tom Stepleton visited the museum and is seen here with volunteer Chris Curtin (left). Tom is a vintage computer enthusiast from London who's been enjoying the world of the 4050-series computers for the past few years. He's looking after two 4051s, a 4054A, and a 4006-1 terminal, and he's made a transpiler that converts a subset of Pascal to 4050-series BASIC which is available at github. [external link]
John and Patsy McCoy visited along with their daughter. Both John and Patsy worked at Tektronix and we've included their Photo Album pictures.
Tektronix Service Solutions Organization (SSO) management team.
Members of the Tektronix Explorer Scouts Post 876 visited the museum as part of their reunion. Since the steps are no longer in front of Building 50 where their photos were taken, we used the steps in front of the museum.
Chester Schink's daughter Janice, son Andrew, and nephew Bob Oblack came for a tour of the museum. Chet was a Chief Chemist at Tektronix and Bob is a friend of the museum and former Product Marketing Manager at Tektronix.
Ray Hill and Bruce Cumming from Brand Definition visited the museum for some photos to be used in a Tektronix promotion video.
The Tektronix Marketing Leadership team visited to learn more about the history and legacy of the company.
Volunteers and friends of the Synth Library Portland toured the museum. The Synth Library Portland is a collectively-run arts non-profit providing low-cost access to electronic music gear and education. Thomas, on the far left, is also a volunteer at the vintageTEK museum.
Fred Steinhauser and his wife Gabi visited the museum from Austria.
Kandy Hibbs-Davis visited the museum for a vintageTEK backstory and tour. Her father was Nelson Hibbs who joined Tektronix on February 8, 1956 as a calibration engineer. Nelson narrated several of the videos we have in our Video Gallery including:
- Building a Tektronix Ceramic CRT 1967
- Tek Park: a tour of Tektronix Beaverton Campus
- Tektronix Products
- Tektronix, the Continuing Conversation 1970
- You are Tektronix: New Employee Orientation
- Tektronix 7912 High Speed Transient Digitizer 1974
- The Sounds of Progress: Fabrication at Tektronix
- Trans resistance - Full video of Dad's lecture in black and white
- Tektronix Printed Circuit Boards 1969
He appears at the end of the video Leading Effective Discussions 1973. He also wrote and published Basic Electronic Circuits Simplified which we have at the museum.
The museum toured two different groups of Tektronix interns over the summer.
The museum toured a number of international Tektronix Application Engineers who were visiting for the AppsU training.
We hosted two tours of members of the Tektronix Women in Technology groups. The museum partnered with the WIT group to host our STEM event for Valley Catholic School.
Benjamin, a 10th grade student from Sacramento, flew to Portland with his father just to visit the vintageTEK museum. Volunteer Chris Curtin gave him an extensive 150 minute tour. Benjamin has been repairing oscilloscopes and wants to build a spectrum analyzer next.
Teresa Liang from Tek China Shanghai visited the museum and volunteer Gary Johnson (left) gave the tour. Volunteer Dave Brown joined at the end for some conversation.
We hosted six tours on two days as part of the OMSI Science Festival 2024. Our visitors had some knowledge of Tektronix but little knowledge of electronics so we gave a basic introduction with hands-on exhibits.
These two enthusiastic visitors came from Nashville to visit the museum.
Randy started at the Grass Valley Group in 1976 and retired in 2015. He worked on the Model 100 Switcher. This is our Model 1000 which looks the same. The Model 100 was developed during 1983 and introduced at NAB 1984. It had many firsts - table top panel, plastic case, an overlay panel instead of a silkscreen metal panel, PCB mounted switches, and the gray color which became the new standard.
Randy has a YouTube channel and posted a tour of the vintageTEK museum. In the first week it had 32K views!
Visit to the Vintage Tektronix museum by Randy K7AGE - 12 minutes (YouTube website)
Bill (in the hat) visited the museum with friends. Bill helped restore the IBM1401 computer and peripherals at the Computer History Museum so was interested in all the computer displays and Tektronix technology in general.
John came up from Corvallis to visit the museum. He is in the EE program at Oregon State University. His great grandfather Robert W. Morris and his great grandfather's first cousin Gale P. Morris both worked at Tektronix.
Members of Cub Scouts Pack 872 came to visit and learn more about electronic components and computers.
