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 August 2026 Photo of the Month, the Silicon Forest Universe poster, will be familiar to many Oregon residents of a certain age. The first mention of calling the Portland area, or more specifically Washington County, the “Silicon Forest,” has been attributed to a Japanese company’s press release in 1981 and although Lattice Semiconductor trademarked the term in 1984, they didn’t use it.

Analogous to the Silicon Valley, the expression primarily refers to the corridor between Beaverton and Hillsboro populated by Tektronix (founded in 1946), Electro Scientific Industries (ESI, founded in 1944), Intel (created a facility in the area in 1976), and almost 900 other high-tech companies.

Data for the original poster was collected in preparation for a Ph.D. thesis at Portland State University by Heike Mayer in 2002 where she documented the genealogy of various companies and institutions in the region. Her thesis was summarized in a paper published by the Oregon Historical Society in their Oregon Historical Quarterly in 2005. This paper, other information about the poster, the initial V1, and high resolution PDFs of both can be found on our Silicon Forest page. Dr. Mayer is currently a professor of economic geography at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

The poster was created through collaboration with then-PSU design student, Kayoko Teramoto. The primary founders of the Silicon Forest, Tektronix, ESI and Intel, are depicted as suns with their offspring, spun-out companies shown as orbiting planets, organized by the decade of their departure. Start-ups not affiliated with those founding companies are portrayed as comets. This V2 update to the poster was published in 2008 and includes Oregon State, University of Oregon, and Portland State universities.

The following organizations helped at the time with the survey to gather the data: American Electronics Association, Oregon Economic & Community Development Department, Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, Software Association of Oregon. The author is thankful for the support of Portland State University’s Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies.

Courtesy of Heike Mayer © Heike Mayer, University of Bern, Switzerland

Here's a summary of some prominent companies that spun out of Tektronix:

One of the first Tek spinouts was Rodgers Organ Company in 1958, created by Rogers Jenkins and Fred Tinker. Howard Vollum, an organ enthusiast, was a supporter of the company’s formation. The company currently still manufactures organs in Hillsboro. It is now part of the Global Organ Group.

Norman Winningstad, Tek engineer and executive, founded the Floating Point computer company in 1970. It grew from $42M to $127M in sales in three years in the 1980s. By 1985 the company had 1,600 employees. With the rise of microprocessors the company faded and was liquidated in 1991.

Mentor Graphics was formed in 1981 by Tektronix employees Tom Bruggerre, Gerry Langeler and Dave Moffenbeier as an electronic design automation company. Their products include simulation tools for mixed-signal design, manipulation of network data as well as heat transfer and fluid dynamics modeling. At the time of its acquisition by Siemens in 2017, the company had almost 6,000 employees and revenue of $1.3B. It is now named Siemens EDA.

Planar Systems spun out of Tektronix in 1983 under the leadership of Jim Hurd and Chris King. The company became the leading provider of electroluminescent flat panel displays and later evolved into a diverse display systems company with revenue of over $200M. Planar was acquired by the Chinese company, Leyard Optoelectronic in 2015.

InFocus spun out of Planar Systems in 1986 to market products based on projection display technology. Led by Paul Gulick and Steve Hix, the company developed LCD and DLP-based projectors and large-screen, touch-enabled displays. At one point a NASDAQ-listed public company, it was acquired and taken private by Image Holdings, Inc. in 2009 and was a wholly-owned subsidiary.

TriQuint Semiconductor spun out of Tek Labs in 1985 with Tek support to pursue gallium arsenide semiconductors, a high-speed alternative to silicon. The company posted $879M in revenue in 2010 with about 25% coming from business with Apple Computer. After a merger in 2015 the company was renamed Qorvo Inc.

Tek’s circuit board operation spun out as the Merix Corporation in 1994, employing 700 people. In 2006 the company had revenue of $309M. There was a merger in 2009 and Merix became part of TTM Technologies.

Office furniture company Anthro spun out of Tektronix in 1988 and reached $38M in sales before being acquired Ergotron and later by Nortek in 2015.

A part of the Tek Ceramics Group spun out as VisPro in 1994 and was acquired by Kyocera Corporation.

Photos of the Month:  Jan 2025 - Present

Photos of the Month:  Feb 2019 - Dec 2024