[Milsurplus] Surplus stores, then and now

[J. Forster]

Peter Gottlieb wrote:

> Oh, now I remember more...
>
> Many years later when I lived in Massachusetts there was Eli Heffron & Sons
> in Cambridge.  Commercial surplus and he had a side operation that sold
> chips.  I got a bunch of stuff there but he had some unrealistic
> expectations on price most of the time and in the end didn't sell too much
> stuff.  I don't know what happened to it all but I do know he got into
> computers, selling mini and mainframe components to companies then into PCs.

The company was started as a scrap metals operation by the father, Eli who died
sometime in the mid 60s. I was one of the 'inner circle' in those days, and
remember watching as they unloaded new stuff from the truck. Always fun. One
time they were getting in a load of core memory from IBM, which was VERY hot at
the time. Boy, were they pissed when it turned out to be little plastic bottles
of tiny ferrite donuts, not core planes. There were two sons, Ben and Jay. Jay
ran the semiconductor part, Solid State Sales. They got into computers and sold
a lot of DG and DEC surplus, as well as industrial test equipment from local
defense contractors. Both the brothers are now out of the business and one (at
least) has died. The company still exists on Hampshire Street, run by a son, I
believe, and is called Eli Computers.

-John