1952 06 RCA Student Engineer

Summers of 1952, 1953, 1955

Dad was the manager of Broadcast Audio Equipment Engineering at RCA in Camden, NJ in the old Victor Talking Machine Company buildings. He arranged a job as a student engineer in the Standards group. I worked in that group for two summers. The second summer my job was to test every transistor that came into engineering department. It was one or two a day – transistors were brand new at that time.

Dad got a new job in Minneapolis, Minnesota as chief engineer for Maico (Medical Acoustic Instruments Company). The summer of 1954 I spent in Minneapolis where I tried my hand at sales for Hope Chest, selling a collection of sheets, towels, etc to young ladies preparing to marry. I sold one.

The summer of 1955, I worked in the Advanced Development Engineering group. Chuck Shelton was my boss and mentor. My job was to convert an old WWII airborne television camera to work on standard power.

In 1956, companies came to RPI to interview seniors for jobs. I only went to IBM and RCA. The IBM interview resulted in an offer that I did not accept; . in those days, IBM was super strict about what you wear, how much you drink, etc. Not for me

The RCA interview was simply “are you coming back?”. I got a very nice offer ($100/week) and accepted it.