Tektronix, historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. Originally an independent company, it is now a subsidiary of Fortive, a spinoff from Danaher Corporation.
Building 50 at the company's headquarters
Advertisement from an engineering magazine touting the features of the Tektronix 511, which led to Tektronix as a future leader of oscilloscope products
Tektronix 321 - their first battery operated transistor oscilloscope. LEFT: later version RIGHT: earliest version
Model 564, the first mass-produced analog storage oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying voltages of one or more signals as a function of time. Their main purpose is capturing information on electrical signals for debugging, analysis, or characterization. The displayed waveform can then be analyzed for properties such as amplitude, frequency, rise time, time interval, distortion, and others. Originally, calculation of these values required manually measuring the waveform against the scales built into the screen of the instrument. Modern digital instruments may calculate and display these properties directly.
A Tektronix model 475A portable analog oscilloscope, a typical instrument of the late 1970s
Oscilloscope cathode-ray tube, the left square-shaped end would be the blue screen in the upper device when built in.
Typical display of an analog oscilloscope measuring a sine wave signal with 10 kHz. From the grid inherent to the screen together with the user-set parameters of the device shown at the upper display rim, the user may calculate the frequency and the voltage of the measured signal. Modern digital oscilloscopes set the measurement parameters and calculate/display the signal values automatically.
Type 465 Tektronix oscilloscope. This was a popular analog oscilloscope, portable, and is a representative example.
