[volt-nuts] Keithley - and Tek gear

[Marv Gozum @ JHN]

Thanks Dick, that's priceless insight.

Can you explain the benefit of the ceramic jug over just plain glass?




At 02:50 PM 11/17/2010, Dick Moore wrote:

>On Nov 17, 2010, at 4:00 AM, volt-nuts-request at febo.com wrote:
>
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:20:15 -0600
> > From: John Lofgren <jlofgren at lsr.com>
> > Subject: Re: [volt-nuts] Keithley 2001 - and Tek gear
> > To: Discussion of precise voltage measurement <volt-nuts at febo.com>
> > Message-ID:
> >       <B1D0388E59D629408AB9FD22E3887B3B5B3C616367 at Exchange.lsr.local>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> > Not to hijack a thread or get off topic, but that's why we love 
> the older Tek gear.  Their documentation was first rate.  That 
> voluminous and detailed documentation did come back to bite them, though.
> >
> > I read story in " Winning with people: The first 40 years of 
> Tektronix" about the Tek people discovering counterfeit scopes that 
> the military (Navy?) was having built.  As part of their contract 
> to supply scopes they had to supply documentation that amounted to 
> a detailed build manual for the product.  Once the military 
> customer had the documentation they shopped it around to contract 
> manufacturers and found somebody who would build the scopes to 
> print for, presumably, a lower price than the genuine Tek unit.
> >
> > Looks like there is such a thing as too much information :)
> >
> >
> > -John
>
>It was a little more complicated -- When I started at Tek in 1961, I 
>was told that in the 50's, during the Korean conflict, Tek had 
>military contracts that stipulated that Tek had to allow other firms 
>to build the mil-spec gear as a matter of national security. Lavoie 
>Labs and Dumont built Tek scopes under these contracts, and then 
>continued to build Tek scope clones for years afterward, on into the 
>60's, most notably, clones of the 530 and 540 series, which had mil 
>contract provisions on them. Tek of course had the ceramic terminal 
>strips and the others didn't -- Tek made those ceramic strips themselves.
>
>Once PCBs became the basis of wiring, the ceramics plant was falling 
>into disuse, so Tek decided to make ceramic CRT jugs. The problems 
>that needed to be solved in getting the glass faceplates and the 
>ceramic jugs to hold hard vacuum were immense. The fact that they 
>did it is pretty amazing. Corning wasn't real pleased about the 
>switch away from glass jugs. Anyway, doing business with the gummint 
>can be profitable but a bit dangerous.
>
>
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Best Wishes,


Marv Gozum
Philadelphia