[Collins] Art Collins and Collins Radio

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

On 7/5/2014 6:36 PM, Glen Zook wrote:
> Art's final downfall was the CCCS (Collins Computer Control Systems). My
> office was on the mezzanine of Building 402. The summer of 1968,
> Buildings 406 and 408, which housed the computer section, started
> getting very hot inside. He diverted all the chilled water from 402 to
> those buildings. The result was that Building 402 got extremely hot that
> summer.

If 402 was next to the transmitter lab, I remember that mezzanine being 
warm without the chilled water being diverted. The barracks and my lab 
in a trailer at the Army's Night Vision Laboratory at Ft. Belvoir was 
warm that summer too. And the pay was a whole lot worse than what I had 
been making at Collins in '64.

The CCCS was forward thinking but in need of devices that didn't yet 
exist, like integrated circuits for speedy logic, and computer designers 
who understood all the hardware needs along with programming. By 1975 IC 
did exist and I delivered my fist computer. Its now waiting for me to 
fix the keyboard interface so it can be operated in a museum setting.
>
> I could always find an excuse to go over to Building 401, or some other
> place in the Richardson complex. Unfortunately, I couldn't usually find
> an excuse to take my "helper" along. My secretary had certain duties for
> Bill Shockley and for Harry Passman so she could get away from the heat
> on a regular basis.
>
> I was in a position to know when certain people would be laid off,
> terminated, and so forth. Also, was in a position to have a pretty good
> idea as to the financial position of the company. When I got 2-raises at
> the same time, and then an engineering supervisor got a position as the
> head of engineering at a company over in Garland, Texas, who then
> offered me a 50-percent raise over what Collins was paying me, I bailed!

There was certainly good reasons to bail. Many a new hire in Cedar 
Rapids lasted less than a year. There was a policy to hire more than 
needed and weed some out in that first year of work. And many more found 
a nicer working climate. Not to say there wasn't technical challange, 
that there was, but working 60 hour week for 40 hours pay, sometimes 
longer weeks where the lab techs got time and a half while the engineers 
got 40 hours pay didn't encourage engineers to stay. Having emphasized 
broadcast over my microwave interest to go the Cedar Rapids instead of 
Dallas, it wasn't fun to be informed one day that "next week your job is 
in Texas." More of that treatment of engineers as indentured servants. 
There are probably 100,000 electrical and mechanical engineers that have 
worked at Collins and left. Maybe a few thousand that worked their whole 
career there.
>
> A couple of weeks later, my secretary joined me. My "helper" lasted for
> another couple of months but was telephoning me almost daily about
> situations and how to handle them. He then bailed! No one seemed to know
> what I was doing. But, they just knew that the position was needed! That
> position was still there several years after Rockwell bought Art's interest.

Can you say what you were doing?
>
> Art had a house built for his second wife, in Dallas, using uni-strut
> (steel) instead of the normal wood frame construction. Especially in
> warmer weather, the house would start "creaking" as the sun rose in the
> sky (steel expanding) and then would "creak" again as the sun went down
> as the steel contracted.

Wood houses can do that too. Probably there weren't enough fasteners in 
the steel studs which today are very commonly used in commercial 
construction to the point that Menard's carries them.

> Glen, K9STH
>
>
> Website: http://k9sth.com
>
73, Jerry, K0CQ, Technical Adviser to the Collins Radio Association.