 about 16 in Lake Oswego |
Stanley A. 'Stan' Griffiths Aloha, OR QCWA # 25436 10-10 # 5931 |
 picture, ca 1960, in the May 1970 Tektronix Photo Album |
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Posted on February 4, 2020 by Randy Elliott
Stan was born to Arthur and Margaret Griffiths December 19, 1938, in Portland, raised in Lake Oswego, OR, and attended Lake Oswego High School, class of 1957.
Stan was an icon in the ham radio community. His father was a ham which probably helped Stan get licensed at age 15 as WN7TML in 1953. In 1955 Stan became a founding member of WVDXC. W7NI. At the height of his ham career Stan changed his call to W7NI and had a respectable antenna farm on his Blanton property in Aloha and was able to make 'modest' (his words) contacts with his dual 4-1000 amp.
For years Stan and his late wife Pat, KA7UFG, were regulars at northwest ham fests and flea markets. He often gave presentations at SEAPAC, WVDXC and other conventions.
Stan was an entrepreneur, cofounding a service company in Los Angeles, founding Antronics of Oregon, and operating an eBay based company for several years.
He was also an author writing "Oscilloscopes: Selecting and Restoring a Classic", 1992.
Along with Ed Sinclair he cofounded VintageTEK https://vintagetek.org a museum dedicated to preserving Tektronix history.
Stan was predeceased by his wife, Patricia Jean Griffiths, KA7UFG, on March 13, 2018.
He leaves two daughters, Tricia and Valarie.
Greetings from the left coast Ken!
Stan,was a very close friend and we obtained our licenses within a year of each other. Stan got his in '53 with the help of his dad Art, W7PH.
Stan went to work at Tektronix in 1960 and worked in a number of areas from factory service to field engineer.
A formal obit has not yet been published or an announcement of services according to his daughter who I talked to a couple of days ago. Coming!
Stan was a major contester up to about 1984 and had several towers with antennas on his property in Aloha, OR but in the period following '84 all were down but 1. Stan was not active on air much after about 1990 as I recall, but maintained his well set-up ham shack during the time.
The following was posted on one of the exTEK listservs by a member who monitors the Tektronix employee obits and contains information gathered from the Tek Retirement Volunteers function and other old Tek sources.
As you can read, his Tektronix product collection is extensive, including many products which Tek obtained in its acquisition of some small companies having technology complementary to Tek's product line. As of yet we don't know anything about the disposition of that extensive collection. His two daughters have a lot of things on their plate re their dad to deal with!!!!!!
This should give you a bit of an insight into Stan.
Don T W7WLL
Stanley A. Griffiths Dec 19, 1938 - Jan 29, 2020
Stan was a well-known collector of Tektronix oscilloscopes, having about 1,400 at one time. In fact, he even wrote a book on the selection and maintenance of classic oscilloscopes, Oscilloscopes : Selecting and Restoring a Classic by Stan Griffiths (1992, Hardcover)
He was cofounder with Ed Sinclair of vintageTEK, the museum of vintage Tektronix products and history now located at 13489 SW Karl Braun Dr., Beaverton, in the old ceramics building on the Tektronix campus.
Stan was born to Arthur and Margaret Griffiths December 19, 1938, in Portland, raised in Lake Oswego, OR, and attended Lake Oswego High School, class of 1954.
Stan started at Tek in 1960. Between high school and Tektronix, he attended Oregon State College.
He collected photo albums, catalogs, parts, parts documentation, an impressive oscilloscope collection, his ham (W7NI) equipment, and his beloved restored T-Bird.
Stan also loved origami which he learned from Mr. Oya of Sony-Tek, a joint venture between Tektronix and Sony. As one coworker noted, "Stan was a fundamentally kind and decent person. I will miss him."
Stan left Beaverton as a calibration and repair technician for the Tektronix Boston Field Office. Leaving Tek in 1966 he co-started an independent mobile calibration lab in Los Angeles. He returned to Tektronix and worked out of New Hampshire in 1970.
From December 1973 through sometime after May 1978, Stan was working in Service Support.
In Nov 1979, Stan was in TM500 Marketing and from March 1986 through August of 1988 prox, Stan was working as a Frequency Domain Field Engineer out the Portland Field Office.
Stan retired from Tektronix in 1989.
After retirement, Stan started a web site with very helpful information about Tektronix products.
The website may be retrieved with difficulty from:
http://web.archive.org/web/20170924050812/http://www.reprise.com/ash/clients2/default.asp
Following is a piece written by Stan.
I had a long and successful career with Tektronix beginning in 1960 and ending in 1989. There was a 3 year break in it from 1966 to 1970 during which time I was one of the founders of a service company in Los Angeles, CA that specialized in servicing only Tektronix instruments. At Tektronix, I was involved in the checkout of new instruments on the production line or the servicing of field returns from 1960 through 1966. My later jobs at Tektronix included Sales Engineer in the Boston, MA area and later, first level management in Service Support where service plans for new instruments being introduced by Tektronix were developed. I also sold microwave Spectrum Analyzers for Tektronix in the Pacific Northwest from 1980 until my retirement from Tektronix in 1989.
In about 1985, I had the opportunity to acquire about a dozen old tube-type Tek scopes from a local university. I fixed some for the university and they gave me the rest as payment. I found I really enjoyed fixing up the old scopes that I knew and remembered so well from my previous jobs at Tek, and decided I would start a small collection of classic Tektronix scopes and plugins.
Since that time, my collection has gone completely out of control and now, in 1998, numbers over 500 instruments, most of them older than 1970. About 60 of them are restored to museum condition. About 200 of them are planned restorations, and the rest are either spares, which I will fix and sell to other collectors, or parts instruments which will be sacrificed to fix other instruments. I have also amassed a LOT of parts that can be used for the repair and restoration of other instruments. Please see the section of this web site that lists some of the spare parts I have for sale.
The long term plan for my collection is to eventually find a location where it can be put on display for public viewing. Guests are welcome to view the collection now which resides in my 7 car garage at my home. You need to call first to verify that I will be available to personally conduct a tour.
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