At 02:30 PM 12/17/2001 -0800, you wrote:
I was wandering if book published for Tek's 40th anniversary is available for sale and where there any other history books published after and before 40th.
I got mine from a retired Tek employee here in Canada. As far as I could gather, the books were distributed only to Tek employees during Tek's 40th anniversary, and were never published or sold to the public. They may also have been avaiIable as "sales giveaways" to Tek customers but I'm not sure about that. I have seen them for sale on eBay.
If you are smitten with Tektronix, it's a fabulous book to read.
Stan : are you up to copying that one for a CD ?
Phil
"Phil (VA3UX)" <phil@...> wrote: At 12:14 PM 11/20/2001 -0800, you wrote:
Hi Don,
This story probably falls in the category of "Tek Legends" but that does
not mean it
is not true. If asked to prove it . . . I could not . . .
It is apparently quite true Stan, assuming Marshall Lee did a thorough job
of researching Tek's history for Tek's 40th anniversary book. It's on page
241. The bogus "D" holes were prompted by an order (to Tektronix) for two
plug-ins from a company that was a subcontractor to Hickok. The order
apparently had the words "Hickok Job" somewhere on the order form, which
was enough to raise plenty of suspicion and get them planning a trap (the
"D" holes).
Phil
Tek had a pretty good idea what was going to happen when they lost the
Goverment bids
for Tek scopes. They knew who the competing companies were and that
copying was very
likely to take place as there really wasn't an easy way to get around
Tek's patents
and still meet the Government specs for scopes. Tek was on the lookout for
suspicious orders that would be placed with them for instruments that
would serve as
the copy samples.
When a suspicous order was found, Tek rigged a special instrument with an
extra hole
in the chassis with no special purpose other than to make it a unique
instrument and
shipped that instrument to satisfy the order. Sure enough, that very hole
showed up
in the copies. In court, Tek asked the defending companies to explain the
purpose of
the hole and, of course, there was no explaination. Tek, however, had a
very good
explaination, with documents to prove it . . . I don't remember whether
this now
famous hole was in a scope or a plugin. Boy, would I like to have THAT
instrument in
my collection . . .
Stan
w7ni@...
Don Black wrote:
Yes, please tell us about the "Bait Hole".
I've got visions of one of those little Tektronix cartoons of a plugin
sitting on
the ice with a little technician fishing through the hole.
But perhaps I'm just a little weird.
Don Black.
"Phil (VA3UX)" wrote:
At 11:50 AM 11/19/2001 -0800, you wrote:
Hi Mike,
I agree that the Hickok, LaVoie, and Jetronic instruments have some
historic
There are other chapters to this story about what evidence Tek
provided at the
trial that might be interesting to some of you.
Tell them about the "bait" plug-in : the one with the special hole
drilled
in the chassis.
Phil
Stan
w7ni@...
mwcpc7@... wrote:
In a message dated 11/18/2001 5:28:56 PM Eastern Standard Time,
w7ni@... writes:
The main reason that the lawsuit between the U.S. Government and
Tektronix
took so long is that it was the first time in U.S. History that
a private
company (Tek) ever took the U.S.Government to court for patent
infringement.
There were no precidents and no one knew exactly how to
proceed. The
Government's position was that since they had ISSUED the
patents to
Tek in
the first place, they could rescind them any time they wanted
to. Tek
challenged that concept and it took 20 years to resolve it. In
the mean
time,
2 of the three companies that did the copying of Tek
instruments (with
Government approval) went bankrupt (LaVoie
and Jetronic) so there was nothing for Tek to collect from
them. The U.S.
Government and Hickok were left to pay the damages, which, by the
way, did
not even come close to covering the attorny costs, much less
any real
damage
done to Tek.
I have one of the Hickok 545s and was quite surprised to see it
at a
Hamfest.
I was originally going to use it just for parts, but the very
interesting
discussion here makes me think that it has some historical
interest.
Mike Csontos
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