Memorial Tributes Volume 20 (2016) / Chapter Skim
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H. RICHARD JOHNSON
H. RICHARD JOHNSON
Pages 122-131
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From page 123... ...
He attended public schools and was a member of Boy Scout Troop 107, rising to the rank of Eagle. In summers, he worked at the Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco near the Delaware Gap National Recreation Area as a counselor and telephone repairman when he was 15 and 16.
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From page 124... ...
On an American Youth Hostel bicycle trip with his MIT roommate Franco Bosinelli in 1949, he met his future wife Mary Louise Kleckner. They were married the following summer.
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From page 125... ...
The company's initial products were backward wave tubes, which were a crucial component in radar systems, test equipment, and other applications requiring frequency agile microwave power, and traveling wave tubes, which were used primarily in microwave receivers, especially for military applications such as reconnaissance, surveillance, and jamming. Watkins-Johnson was profitable from the start, netting $80,000 on sales of $500,000 in its first year of operation.
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From page 126... ...
Unlike most companies, which sent human resources or recruiting specialists, Watkins, Johnson, and other top management returned to their alma maters and visited a few other elite colleges to personally interview degree candidates. Those that passed muster were invited to spend a day in the plants shadowing other engineers and managers and being seduced by the attractive climate of what would later be called Silicon Valley with its close proximity to the mountains and the ocean.
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From page 127... ...
The successful development of the lowest-noise traveling wave tubes enabled them to build sensitive microwave receiving quipment that led the industry in performance. The e name Watkins-Johnson became all but synonymous with the h ighest-quality radio receivers and receiving systems, products much in demand throughout the Cold War.
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From page 128... ...
Johnson courted and befriended Grimm and adroitly handled the acquisition of Communication Electronics. With the infusion of resources and blending of their previously separate areas of radio frequency expertise, this new division of Watkins-Johnson quickly began to dominate the design and production of radios and systems for vital signals intelligence and communications intelligence national security work.
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From page 129... ...
Competition in the semiconductor equipment industry proved too fierce for the company to continue expanding in this area. This, in close combination with an ill-fated attempt to transition the engineering staff and expertise from surveillance radios into the nascent wireless telecommunications business, left the company vulnerable by the mid-1990s.
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From page 130... ...
He worked to improve housing, transportation, and educational opportunities in the area through the Santa Clara County Manufacturing Group. An active man favoring tennis and downhill skiing throughout his life, Johnson also enjoyed the serenity of his Bow Bay vacation home on Lake Tahoe.
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