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I recall him saying they sold to Tektronix as well as HP. The story he told me was that when the DoD wanted to buy scopes from Tek, rather than jumping through
by chiph 7y ago
I recall him saying they sold to Tektronix as well as HP.
The story he told me was that when the DoD wanted to buy scopes from Tek, rather than jumping through all the acquisition process hoops, Tek just handed them a glossy product catalog and told them to pick out which ones they wanted. Which went about as well as you might think, but back then there really was no substitute for a Tek scope so the Pentagon caved.
- CamperBob2 7y agoYeah, I'm going through the same process right now with a similar product and DoD customer. What happens these days is that they send out an RFQ to half a dozen different "approved suppliers," which is government-speak for "People who have jumped through the necessary hoops to drop-ship stuff to the Federal government from the basement in their house." Whichever "supplier" marks up the product the least -- a product they will never see, much less stock -- will presumably be the one who wins the right to pass along the order to me. This is the government's idea of competitive bidding. It's just nuts. The waste, overhead, red tape, and opportunities for corruption are just totally batshit nuts. But what can you do...
- blattimwind 7y ago> but back then there really was no substitute for a Tek scope so the Pentagon caved. Well, they still got their own SKUs with (minor) modifications.
- CamperBob2 7y agoSuch as being cloned shamelessly (and illegally) by Hickok, IIRC.
- blattimwind 7y agoThat was with the 500 series, Tektronix supplied 5000 and 7000 series systems to the DoD, e.g. as the AN/USM 281.