[Collins] Art Collins and Collins Radio

Sun Jul 6 15:25:53 EDT 2014

At one job I had a short title of Maintainability Engineer. This required me 
to interface between R&D and Field Service to be sure of meeting reliability 
standards, ease of repair/replacement, diagnostics, and field engineer 
training.

That led to advancements to R&D, Management, and time to get a BSEE and MSEE 
as well as several advanced management and business courses at Harvard and 
MIT (-;

OTOH retirement is more fun and I dont have to play office politics with 
prima donna engineers or cut throat upper management. I retired as a Sr 
Engineer in millimeter wave R&D at 62.

Carl
KM1H

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glen Zook via Collins" <collins at mailman.qth.net>
To: "David Thompson" <thompson at mindspring.com>; <geraldj at netins.net>
Cc: <collins at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2014 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: [Collins] Art Collins and Collins Radio

Building 402, when I came to work at Collins in April 1967, stood alone. 
That is, there was no other building near it. Then, in late summer of 1967, 
work was started on both Buildings 406 and 408 just west of Building 402. 
There was, maybe, about 50-feet between 402 and 406 and then another about 
50-feet between 406 and 408. On the main floor of Building 402, most of the 
area was open an contained row, after row, of women doing assembly 
operations on all sorts of circuit boards. The northwest corner was the 
photo lab. Buildings 406 and 408, along with a portion of Buildings 401 and 
402, belonged to Process Division.

My job title, at Collins Radio Company, was Senior Engineering 
Administrative Assistant Process Division E/B Dallas Region! Basically, my 
job was as the liaison between the engineering personnel and the production 
department in the Process Division. Process Division made the circuit 
boards, thin films, and thick films for the other divisions. Collins hired 
me right out of Georgia Tech and my starting salary was what a number of the 
engineers were making with up to over 5-years experience.

Among my duties was formulating budgets for the entire Process Division 
Dallas Region. These budgets were revised every 6-months for an 18-month 
time frame. My secretary, as ordered by Harry Passman, the vice-president 
over Process Division, did a weekly summary of all expenditures that was 
presented to Harry Passman and the managers over all the groups in the 
Division every Friday morning.

About a year after I went to work at Collins, a "helper" was hired. He had 
graduated from North Texas State University (now University of North Texas) 
over 2-years before I graduated from Georgia Tech and his starting salary 
was $200.00 a month less than my starting salary.

As for the Burroughs 5500 at Georgia Tech: I am VERY familiar with that 
computer! During the fall quarter of 1966, I had a required class in writing 
programs for the computer using Algol. Before one could actually get a 
program to run on the computer, the program cards had to be run through a 
process called "syntax". The card reader for that process like to play 
52,000 pickup several times every night. That is, the syntax reader would 
literally throw quite a number of cards into the air. Of course, the cards 
would be hopelessly intermingled and the computer center staff would just 
put the cards into a waste basket. As a result, one soon learned to make 
multiple copies of their cards. There were like 6-each card punching 
machines at the computer center and students had to wait, sometimes, for 
several hours to get a "turn" at the machine. Fortunately, my major had an 
additional 4-each card punching machines, located several buildings away
 from the computer center, that were available only to students with 
particular majors. Often, there was absolutely no one waiting to use those 
machines. As such, it was very easy to make like 10, or more, copies of the 
program cards.

The Process Division "Art" project was called "CCCS Marine". This project 
involved building the "bridge" of a yacht which was capable of leaving 
Newport Beach, California, going down the west side of Mexico and Central 
America, making its way through the Panama Canal, then going up the east 
side of of the continent all the way to New York Harbor without the need of 
anyone "touching" the helm. This was long before GPS. The bridge was, after 
completion, to be shipped to the Collins facility at Newport Beach where the 
hull of the vessel was to be constructed. Of course, after Art "sold out" to 
Rockwell International, this project was abandoned.

In 1973, during the time when I owned the Motorola reconditioned equipment 
center for the south-central United States, I was persuaded to purchase a 
1958 Cessna 150 airplane, N5572E. The "new" president of Collins / Rockwell 
was learning how to fly in that particular aircraft. Because of this, the 
aircraft was allowed to be housed in the Collins hanger at Addison Airport. 
It was in this hanger that the 3-Boeing 707 aircraft, used as "Air Force 
One", were housed to service, and update, the communications equipment at 
least twice a year. There would be Air Force personnel, with loaded M-16 
rifles, stationed surrounding the aircraft and the little, green, Cessna 150 
sitting by the door.

Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com

On Saturday, July 5, 2014 11:10 PM, David Thompson <thompson at mindspring.com> 
wrote:

I remember seeing one of the Collins Computer Booklets while I was at LSU in
about 1967 or 8. It was used as a recruiting booklet by Collins. At about
this same time IBM replaced the old 7094's in the LSU computer lab with a
IBM 360/65 which was Gene Amdahl's first in the 360 series of Enterprise
Computers which ran from the 360 series through the later 370, and now 390
series.

I went to work for Burroughs Corp which I found in a conflict between the
old accounting machine type computers and the newer B series which competed
head on with the IBM 360. We installed a B2500 at a big Wire and Cable
Company south of Atlanta. The top of the B line was the B5000 which was
installed at Georgia Tech as a B5500. Then in 1971 Control Data Came along
and installed the first of the Cyber Super Computer at Georgia Tech. I met
my wife who worked for Control Data in Wind Tunnel testing at Lockheed
Georgia .

The advances of these companies wiped out Collins attempt in the Computer
Market. Only IBM is still a player in the market although Seymour Cray left
Control Data to form his own Company
Cray Research and is still selling his big vector machines to DOD, NASA and
the like and his competition is several Japanese Companies.

Dave K4JRB
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