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.

The photo of the month for April 2026 features a man who never worked at Tektronix. However, while Tektronix benefited greatly from an early interaction with him, he later was responsible for creating what would become the company’s chief competitor. Norman Neely, pictured on the right with three unidentified Neely and Associates’ employees, and a Type 511 oscilloscope on an R-500 scope-mobile, founded a successful sales representative organization in the 1930s. Around 1940 David Packard and William Hewlett approached Neely with the proposal that he would become their first sales representative. Neely successfully promoted HP’s audio equipment with movie studios and radio stations in Southern California, resulting a major sale to Walt Disney. He was instrumental in launching Hewlett Packard.

During World War 2, Bill Hewlett signed on with the US Army, working in the Pentagon. During that time he learned of a “genius” radar designer who had received the Legion of Merit award for his work in Britain. Toward the close of the war, Bill arranged for Howard Vollum to visit David Packard, who had remained in Palo Alto to run the company since the government was a key customer during the war. In Packard’s memoir he recalls the meeting with Howard - it was cordial and to the point. Howard made it clear he wanted to start a company and produce oscilloscopes. While HP might seem to have been an ideal place where Howard could have pursued his dream, even though HP had a well-stocked catalog of T&M equipment, they then didn’t make oscilloscopes.

Howard and David Packard parted company amicably and when Tektronix offered the 511 in 1947, Packard introduced Neely who became the Tektronix west coast sales representative. Tektronix oscilloscopes rapidly became one of Neely’s most profitable lines.

Norman Neely was surprised and dismayed when Tektronix dismissed all their sales representatives in the early 1950s. Howard felt that in general, external sales representatives weren’t fully demonstrating the capabilities of Tektronix oscilloscopes. The position of “Field Engineer” was created; it combined sales, field service, application engineering and customer relations into one job description. This evolved to be a tremendous asset for Tektronix.

Neely was outraged. House and Price wrote a comprehensive history of HP where they document a meeting in early 1954 called by Neely where he demanded that Hewlett and Packard design their own oscilloscopes. According to their telling of the story, Neely waved his arms and shouted, but he carried the day. By 1956, HP introduced two new scopes and in 1960, they had a line of HP oscilloscopes that would only grow. And the rest is history.

Can you image how this story might have turned out if David Packard had hired Howard to build the first HP oscilloscopes?

References: David Packard, “The HP Way”, Harper Business, 1995 p. 78-79; Charles H. House and Raymond L. Price “The HP Phenomenon” Stanford Business Books, 2009, p. 50-51, Marshall M. Lee “Winning with People: The First Forty Years of Tektronix” 1986

Photos of the Month:  Jan 2025 - Present

Photos of the Month:  Feb 2019 - Dec 2024