Quote:
Originally Posted by Retrovert
it wasn't the small upstarts of HP and Tek that ate its lunch and smashed its ricebowl.
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Indeed! but it was perhaps a contributing factor, more akin to "taking DuMont's salad" starting in the late 40s.
"The profits from the oscillographs helped him invest in television design and his DuMont TV Network. Unfortunately the time spent on his TV ventures proved to be the end of his profitable oscillograph business. In 1947 a young equipment manufacturer called Tektronix produced the model 511 Time Base Trigger and Sweep Oscilloscope for $795. The use of time instead of frequency to measure a sweep across the CRT was Tektronix's big selling point. Time measurements are easier to interpret pulses and complex waveforms. It has been mentioned informally that Allen DuMont saw the model 511 demonstrated at an electronics show. He tried it and was impressed, but commented to Howard Vollum and Jack Murdock, co-founders of Tektronix that it was too expensive and they would be lucky to sell any. Tektronix's time base trigger and time sweep generator design would become the standard in the 1950s and into the 21st century. Tektronix would replace DuMont Oscillographs as the leading selling oscilloscope brand."
from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_B._DuMont
Did DuMont actually fail to understand that he was looking at a "better mousetrap" that could demand a higher pricepoint... or was he perhaps just giving a couple of "upstarts" from the west a hard time?
jr
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