As we continue to work our way through our archive of photos, we run across some that are a bit out of the ordinary.  They may be humorous or unique but they stand out from the other photos. We post new photos here monthly with the previous photos in the slideshow.

Our April Photo of the Month comes from the 1982 Tektronix Catalog. An unidentified woman is shown on page 33 using a suite of Information Display Group products. A 4663 C-size Plotter is in the foreground with a 4954 Tablet alongside and its controller behind. She is seated at a 4054A desktop computer and a pair of 4907 File Managers using 8-inch, 64kB floppy disks are on her left.

The caption to the photo in the report reads: TEKTRONIX 2D drafting workstation enables rapid updating of facilities plans. A careful look at the title of the drawing on the plotter indicates it’s the layout for the Documentation Group in Building 63 of the Wilsonville campus.

The 4054 first appeared in the 1980 catalog. It evolved from the 4051 that was introduced in the 1976 catalog and was described as a BASIC Graphics Computing System. An all-in-one design, it combined an 11-inch direct-view storage CRT, keyboard, Motorola CPU, and a 3M DC300 tape drive with 300kB memory capability. The standard 4051 had 8kB of DRAM, upgradable to 32kB. The 4054, and the 4052, also introduced in 1980, expanded the 405X line where both featured a faster processor. The 4054 incorporated a 19-inch storage tube with color refresh as an option.

Note that the 405x line of desktop computers predated the IBM PC, introduced in 1981, by five years.

Photos of the Month:  Jan 2025 - Present

Photos of the Month:  Feb 2019 - Dec 2024