October 2017 Update
October was also a busy month at the museum. The vintageTEK museum has had a booth at the Northwest Electronics Design and Manufacturing Expo for the past 5 years. This is a fun event as we reach and interact with a broad range of industry professionals. This year we mixed things up a bit with a different display of items in our booth.
- A laptop running a continuous set of videos from the museum Video Gallery
- A collection of early catalogs and printed materials
- A display of CRTs including a prototype of the liquid crystal light valve
- A J20 / 7J20 plug-in optical spectrometer with a color changing LED bulb
- A 454 displaying the Tek Bug/Wizard in XY mode
- A 524AD television oscilloscope
- A Sony/Tek 323 and Tek 1401 spectrum analyzer displaying local FM radio stations
- A 5CT1N plug-in curve tracer in a 5111A storage mainframe
- A 7104 mainframe oscilloscope with a micro channel plate CRT along with a cut-away CRT showing the micro channel plate
Staffing the booth (left to right) are Bob Haas, museum chairman, Tom Goodapple, former Rogers Organ employee, Bruce Baur, museum board member, and Dave Brown, also a museum board member. Bob, Bruce and Dave have a combined total of 74 years experience at Tektronix.
The museum continues to conduct a number of group tours. Some occur on during the museum regular open days but many are organized in advance on closed days. Bob Haas, vintageTEK museum chairman, conducts a personal tour of this group of five Tektronix new hires sharing company history, technology, and products. This particular group is at the headquarters for extensive training in the Multi-Brand Commercial Calibration Services and will be deployed across the country at various sites.
We would like to highlight another volunteer this month. Liles Garcia is originally from Tampa, Florida. He got his BSEE degree at the University of Florida and started working at Tek in 1972 after completing an enlistment in the Air Force. In the Air Force he worked in a test equipment engineering group at the San Antonio Air Materiel Area (SAAMA).
Liles worked out of the Oklahoma City Field Office for a year and a half and then returned to Beaverton to work in 7000 Series Marketing. He later moved to Service Support for Transient Digitizing Instruments, and then to Automatic Circuit Board Test. Liles left Tektronix in 1987 and worked at Bipolar Integrated Technology ( BIT ) for several years and later at another start-up company.
Liles is retired and is active in community participation in Washington County. He collects antique radios specializing in WWII military communications receivers and battery sets. He enjoys volunteering at the VintageTek Museum and has been a volunteer since the Museum first began. Liles organizes and maintains the inventory of repair parts for the museum. His work ensures the restoration engineers can easily find the parts they need in their repair activities.
We continue to add material to our website. There are new on-line exhibits and many new scanned documents and history of the company. If you haven't been in to see our new location, we'd love to have you visit any Thursday or Saturday.
A real asset to our museum! He also belongs to the Northwest Vintage Radio Society as an active asset there.