Fascinating!
BTW, what was the reason for creating the 465M for the government vs selling
the 465? Was it a cost issue? Or some special features? Was the 455 an
outgrowth of the 465M or was it the other way around?
I worked in Digital Service Instruments as a production tech in the late 70s,
which was a new group in Portables which began with the 851 Digital Tester.
This was a product designed originally for Burroughs for their first line
techs as a scope replacement. The instrument was principally a clever
integration of DMM and counter/timer functions and the idea was that a tech
could follow a diagnostic tree and compare readings to arrive at the fault,
without the need to be familiar with how a scope worked. Anyway, we were
next to the T900 line and if DSI production was a bit slow, I would get to
work on T900 product. While not as nice as the "real" portables, the top
line T935 wasn't a bad instrument (2x35MHz) as far as functionality was
concerned.
About once a month our group got to either take a tour of another area, or
had a guest in, as was common practice back then in order to get more
familiar with other parts of Tek. One time it was the the marketing product
manager for T900. As you know, the T900 line styling was a little odd, and
was derided for looking like an old Kerby cannister vacuum cleaner instead of
like a traditional portable scope. The gentleman, whose name I've long since
forgotten, was quite a character. He told us he wanted to do an ad with a
photo of a field service tech holding a T900 in one hand and a vacuum cleaner
hose in the other hand with the line "Tektronix is Going to Clean Up in the
Low Cost Scope Business". But the idea was shot down. We had quite a laugh
over that, and he was an inspiration for the T900 team who felt somewhat
second rate compared to the groups working on the more expensive portables
and lab scopes. My recollection is that were a great bunch of people
regardless of what they worked on.
Don
