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 July Photo of the Month is of the 211 miniscope used in the 211 advertisement.

The 211 miniscope was introduced in the October 11, 1971 issue of Electronics as "a new low-in size, that is" oscilloscope. Click on the image to view the PDF.

The 211 was a laboratory-quality, battery-operated, 500 kHz portable scope weighing just 2.5 lbs and only taking up 3 x 5 x 9 inches in volume. Part of the miniaturization came from the use of three Tektronix designed integrated circuits. The CRTs in the miniscopes were the smallest CRTs Tektronix ever produced.

The 211 was the first of a very popular line of miniature scopes that included a dual-channel direct-view storage model (214), a 1 MHz version that included a digital multimeter (213) and a 10 MHz scope (222). The 224 with 60 Mhz bandwidth was introduced in 1993. More information is on our 200 Series Oscilloscopes page.

The initial instrument concept was conceived by David Allen during his internship at Tektronix and he later was the 211 project leader. David's memoir Birth of the Miniscope is on our Employees Stories page and details the history of the development of the miniscope family.

Photos of the Month:  Jan 2025 - Present

Photos of the Month:  Feb 2019 - Dec 2024