Jack never married and he had no close family members when he died. Jack was the cofounder of Tektronix, Inc. He drowned after a floatplane accident in Klickitat County, Washington, in the Columbia River. He was taxiing for takeoff in rough water on a Sunday afternoon when his Piper "Super Cub" floatplane nosed over in the water. Jack presumably drowned after the accident; his body was never recovered. It took four years to probate his estate. His estate of approximately 80 million dollars went to the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust in 1975. Here is their biography on Jack:
Jack Murdock was born in Portland, Oregon, on August 15, 1917. Upon graduating from Franklin High School, Jack chose, with help from his parents, to go into business rather than to pursue a college education. He purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. There, in 1936, he began a long-term working relationship with his technician, Howard Vollum, which resulted in the pair becoming principal co-founders of Tektronix in 1946 in Beaverton, Oregon. This course of development was interrupted only by Jack's brief stint in the U. S. Coast Guard during World War II.
Jack first served as Vice President and General Manager of Tektronix. Then, in 1960, he was elected Chairman of the Board, a position he held until his untimely death on May 16, 1971. Tektronix, Inc., with headquarters presently in Wilsonville, Oregon, has become one of the world's prominent electronic instrumentation companies and a major employer in Oregon. While the Trust is proud of its Tektronix heritage, it is an independent private foundation with no connection with the company.
Jack had a number of interests beyond Tektronix. One of these was Oregon Bulb Farms, which grew high grade Asiatic/Oriental Lilies commercially. Another was a Piper distributorship for the Pacific Northwest, operating out of Pearson Field in Vancouver. He was a pilot and his favorite plane was a Piper Super Cub. He was intensely interested in aviation safety and initiated a number of modifications of aircraft to make them safer and more serviceable to pilots. His love of aviation brought him to an untimely death at the age of 53 in a float plane accident on the Columbia River.
Jack Murdock was both an idealist and a realist and a life-long seeker of new insights. He believed in science as a main source of knowledge, and knowledge as a key ingredient to addressing and solving the issues and challenges of our world. He was thoroughly unpretentious, soft-spoken, and a listener. He possessed a rare combination of good judgment, hard work, tolerance, life-long learning, and scrupulous honesty. He practiced philanthropy through his own private foundation that existed until the Murdock Trust was formed.
-----
Evergreen Aviation Museum's tribute to Jack:
Jack Murdock believed in science as a main source of knowledge and the key to resolving issues. Convincing his parents to help him start a business rather than pay for a college education, he purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. No one was surprised when in 1946, he and his technician, Howard Vollum, exploited their small radio and appliance shop to found Tektronix, Inc. -- now one of the world's most prominent electronic instrumentation companies. A Portland, Oregon native, private pilot and aviation buff, Murdock believed deeply in philanthropy and helped fund Northwest education and scientific research wherever he could. Murdock once operated a Piper aircraft distributorship at Pearson Field in Vancouver. With a strong interest in aviation safety, he initiated a umber of aircraft modifications, making them safer and more serviceable to pilots. The SuperCub was his favorite plane. Subsequent to his untimely death in a floatplane crash on the Columbia River in 1971, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust was established in 1975 per Murdock's will. Focusing its funds to grantmaking allocations in the Pacific Northwest, the Murdock Trust mission focuses on enriching quality of life by funding organizations seeking to strengthen the educational and cultural programs in creative and sustainable ways. The Trust is now one of the five largest private foundations in the Northwest. It funded the creation of the Jack Murdock Aviation Center at Pearson Field in Vancouver as a lasting tribute to his life.
-----
From the Columbian, Clark County Ancestors:
Melvin J. "Jack" Murdock was the man nobody here knew before he died in an airplane accident in 1971.
Since his demise, Murdock's name has become one of the most famous in Vancouver. It is attached to an industrial park at 1115 S.E. 164th Ave., an office building and plaza on Broadway in downtown Vancouver, and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, based in Vancouver.
Murdock, a native of Portland, had lived in Vancouver for at least 12 years before his death, but was a somewhat private person who remained out of the public eye. He had lived in a mansion at 5601 Buena Vista Drive for the last decade of his life, but only his closest neighbors knew it.
Murdock built his fortune as a co-founder of Tektronix with Howard Vollum in 1946. The firm grew to become the world's largest producer of oscilloscopes and other electronic items.
On Sunday, May 16, 1971, Murdock, then 53, was piloting a seaplane which lost power and overturned in the Columbia River near Maryhill. A companion swam ashore, but the current dragged Murdock beneath the water. His body was never recovered.
Although no trace of the missing man could be found, Murdock was declared legally dead by Clark County Superior Court on June 11, 1971, less than a month after the accident. Murdock's will was then read, and it was found he had left only token amounts to 17 relatives (Murdock was a bachelor with no immediate relatives), with the remainder of his estate, estimated at more than $80 million, to go into a charitable foundation.
The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust was started in 1975 with assets of more than $90. Today, the trust assets are estimated at more than $200 million, although over the past 14 years more than $100 million has been distributed to nonprofit programs throughout the Northwest.
About 1,200 requests for money from the trust are studied each year by the trust staff, which operates from offices in the M.J. Murdock Executive Plaza, 703 Broadway, Vancouver. Of these, fewer than 10 percent are awarded grants.
-----
The early years of Textronix from Hoover's Profile of the company:
Tektronix, Inc., founded in 1946, is the world's second largest supplier of electronic testing and measuring devices. The company develops, manufactures, and markets oscilloscopes--instruments used to measure and display electrical signals--as well as logic analyzers, signal sources, spectrum analyzers, and communication and video test equipment. Tektronix serves many industries, including computing, communications, semiconductors, education, government, military, aerospace, research, automotive, and consumer electronics. The company spent the majority of the 1990s restructuring and eventually split itself into two major divisions in 1999. Xerox bought its printer operations, leaving it focused on its testing and measuring devices. Tektronix made its largest acquisition to date in 2004 when it purchased Inet Technologies Inc.
Early History
Tektronix was founded by three U.S. Coast Guard veterans and an electronics expert from the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Portland native Melvin Jack Murdock spent World War II as a Coast Guardsman, maintaining radio equipment for the Navy and planning for a career once the war ended. By 1945, he had convinced two friends, Glenn Leland and Miles Tippery, that the three of them should start their own business, although none had an idea exactly what that business should be. They also decided to bring in Charles Howard Vollum, a graduate of Portland's Reed University with a degree in physics who had operated a radio repair business in the back room of an appliance store Murdock had owned before the war. Vollum was then designing radar sighting devices for the Signal Corps.
In December 1945 the four servicemen met in Portland to draft articles of incorporation for a broadly defined company that would manufacture, sell, install, repair, "and otherwise handle and dispose of" electronic equipment. They called their company Tekrad, which was incorporated on January 2, 1946. Vollum was president and Murdock vice-president. The name was changed to Tektronix, Inc., a month later when they learned about a California company that had registered a similar name, Techrad.
Although Tektronix was still without a specific product or purpose, Vollum decided to build an oscilloscope from spare electronics parts being stockpiled by his partners from postwar government surplus sales. At the time, the Du Mont Company was the leading manufacturer of oscilloscopes, which were indispensable to the rapidly growing electronics industry. Vollum, who had built his first oscilloscope while in college, believed he could design one that was better and would sell for less than half what Du Mont charged. Vollum later told Forbes that Du Mont "wanted to fool around with big-time television. They were complacent about their scope."
Vollum completed his oscilloscope in the spring of 1946. It was far more accurate than anything then on the market. Unfortunately, it also was so large that it covered Vollum's entire workbench. He immediately began working on a more compact model, and Murdock brought in another buddy from the Coast Guard, a machinist named Milt Bave, to help with the design. The redesign took 12 months, but in May 1947 Tektronix sold the first "portable" oscilloscope to the University of Oregon Medical School. The model 511, which became known as the Vollumscope, weighed 50 pounds.
In 1947 Tektronix had sales of $27,000. The next year, sales increased almost tenfold, to $257,000, and the customer list included most of the major electronics research firms in the United States, including Hewlett-Packard, Philco Radio Corporation, RCA Laboratories Division, Westinghouse Electric Company, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1948 Tektronix also sold its first oscilloscope overseas, to the L. M. Ericcson Telephone Company of Sweden. By 1950, Tektronix was manufacturing its seventh generation of oscilloscopes, the model 517. Orders were backlogged six months to a year, and annual sales had exceeded $1 million.
Tek Culture Leading to Success: 1950-70
By the early 1950s, Murdock was already beginning to lose interest in managing Tektronix. He took up flying and started an aircraft sales company on the side.
-----
From the Monday, May 17, 1971 Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington:
Headline: Co-founder of Tektronix feared dead
Search was continuing today for the body of Jack Murdock, 53, of Vancouver, who is missing and presumed drowned in the Columbia River near Maryhill.
Murdock, co-founder and chairman of the board of Tektronix, Inc., Oregon's largest manufacturing firm, was piloting a seaplane which reportedly overturned while attempting to take off from the Columbia Sunday afternoon.
Klickitat County sheriff's office reported today at Goldendale that an aerial search will be under way when weather permits. The search this morning was on the ground.
Naomi Hamblin, 34, of Portland, a passenger in Murdock's seaplane, was able to swim to shore from the overturned plane.
United Press International reported that both occupants of the plane clung to the pontoons after the crash, seemingly waiting for the overturned craft to drift closer to shore.
They began swimming toward shore later, but Murdock turned back toward the plane about halfway to the bank. He was last seen being pulled under by the river's current, the State Patrol informed UPI.
Witnesses reported the seaplane landed on the river about 3 p.m. and was attempting to take off a few minutes later when the accident occurred.
Murdock was co-founder of Tektronix in 1946 with Howard Vollum, and had been a director of that firm since the beginning.
He was secretary-treasurer of Textronix for most of the time from 1946 to 1960, and was elected chairman of the board in 1960.
Tektronix has approximately 9,000 employees world-wide, including around 7,000 at Beaverton, Ore. The company manufactures oscilloscopes.
Murdock's office had been at Pearson Airpark for many years.
He was president and sole owner of Pacific Northwest Aviation Co., which is said to be a small privately-owned firm.
Before World War II he was in the electrical appliance and radio business in Portland on a retail basis. Murdock served in the Coast Guard during World War II.
The seaplane in Sunday's accident has been tied up at Maryhill awaiting investigation by federal aviation officials.
-----
Movie on the life of Jack Murdock
MJ Murdock - His Life
Jack's autobiography that he wrote when he was 16
Work and Human Satisfaction - A speech by Jack Murdock presented at a 1966 Portland Chamber of Commerce seminar
National Transportation Safety Board accident report
Jack Murdock was born in Portland, Oregon, on August 15, 1917. Upon graduating from Franklin High School, Jack chose, with help from his parents, to go into business rather than to pursue a college education. He purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. There, in 1936, he began a long-term working relationship with his technician, Howard Vollum, which resulted in the pair becoming principal co-founders of Tektronix in 1946 in Beaverton, Oregon. This course of development was interrupted only by Jack's brief stint in the U. S. Coast Guard during World War II.
Jack first served as Vice President and General Manager of Tektronix. Then, in 1960, he was elected Chairman of the Board, a position he held until his untimely death on May 16, 1971. Tektronix, Inc., with headquarters presently in Wilsonville, Oregon, has become one of the world's prominent electronic instrumentation companies and a major employer in Oregon. While the Trust is proud of its Tektronix heritage, it is an independent private foundation with no connection with the company.
Jack had a number of interests beyond Tektronix. One of these was Oregon Bulb Farms, which grew high grade Asiatic/Oriental Lilies commercially. Another was a Piper distributorship for the Pacific Northwest, operating out of Pearson Field in Vancouver. He was a pilot and his favorite plane was a Piper Super Cub. He was intensely interested in aviation safety and initiated a number of modifications of aircraft to make them safer and more serviceable to pilots. His love of aviation brought him to an untimely death at the age of 53 in a float plane accident on the Columbia River.
Jack Murdock was both an idealist and a realist and a life-long seeker of new insights. He believed in science as a main source of knowledge, and knowledge as a key ingredient to addressing and solving the issues and challenges of our world. He was thoroughly unpretentious, soft-spoken, and a listener. He possessed a rare combination of good judgment, hard work, tolerance, life-long learning, and scrupulous honesty. He practiced philanthropy through his own private foundation that existed until the Murdock Trust was formed.
-----
Evergreen Aviation Museum's tribute to Jack:
Jack Murdock believed in science as a main source of knowledge and the key to resolving issues. Convincing his parents to help him start a business rather than pay for a college education, he purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. No one was surprised when in 1946, he and his technician, Howard Vollum, exploited their small radio and appliance shop to found Tektronix, Inc. -- now one of the world's most prominent electronic instrumentation companies. A Portland, Oregon native, private pilot and aviation buff, Murdock believed deeply in philanthropy and helped fund Northwest education and scientific research wherever he could. Murdock once operated a Piper aircraft distributorship at Pearson Field in Vancouver. With a strong interest in aviation safety, he initiated a umber of aircraft modifications, making them safer and more serviceable to pilots. The SuperCub was his favorite plane. Subsequent to his untimely death in a floatplane crash on the Columbia River in 1971, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust was established in 1975 per Murdock's will. Focusing its funds to grantmaking allocations in the Pacific Northwest, the Murdock Trust mission focuses on enriching quality of life by funding organizations seeking to strengthen the educational and cultural programs in creative and sustainable ways. The Trust is now one of the five largest private foundations in the Northwest. It funded the creation of the Jack Murdock Aviation Center at Pearson Field in Vancouver as a lasting tribute to his life.
-----
From the Columbian, Clark County Ancestors:
Melvin J. "Jack" Murdock was the man nobody here knew before he died in an airplane accident in 1971.
Since his demise, Murdock's name has become one of the most famous in Vancouver. It is attached to an industrial park at 1115 S.E. 164th Ave., an office building and plaza on Broadway in downtown Vancouver, and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, based in Vancouver.
Murdock, a native of Portland, had lived in Vancouver for at least 12 years before his death, but was a somewhat private person who remained out of the public eye. He had lived in a mansion at 5601 Buena Vista Drive for the last decade of his life, but only his closest neighbors knew it.
Murdock built his fortune as a co-founder of Tektronix with Howard Vollum in 1946. The firm grew to become the world's largest producer of oscilloscopes and other electronic items.
On Sunday, May 16, 1971, Murdock, then 53, was piloting a seaplane which lost power and overturned in the Columbia River near Maryhill. A companion swam ashore, but the current dragged Murdock beneath the water. His body was never recovered.
Although no trace of the missing man could be found, Murdock was declared legally dead by Clark County Superior Court on June 11, 1971, less than a month after the accident. Murdock's will was then read, and it was found he had left only token amounts to 17 relatives (Murdock was a bachelor with no immediate relatives), with the remainder of his estate, estimated at more than $80 million, to go into a charitable foundation.
The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust was started in 1975 with assets of more than $90. Today, the trust assets are estimated at more than $200 million, although over the past 14 years more than $100 million has been distributed to nonprofit programs throughout the Northwest.
About 1,200 requests for money from the trust are studied each year by the trust staff, which operates from offices in the M.J. Murdock Executive Plaza, 703 Broadway, Vancouver. Of these, fewer than 10 percent are awarded grants.
-----
The early years of Textronix from Hoover's Profile of the company:
Tektronix, Inc., founded in 1946, is the world's second largest supplier of electronic testing and measuring devices. The company develops, manufactures, and markets oscilloscopes--instruments used to measure and display electrical signals--as well as logic analyzers, signal sources, spectrum analyzers, and communication and video test equipment. Tektronix serves many industries, including computing, communications, semiconductors, education, government, military, aerospace, research, automotive, and consumer electronics. The company spent the majority of the 1990s restructuring and eventually split itself into two major divisions in 1999. Xerox bought its printer operations, leaving it focused on its testing and measuring devices. Tektronix made its largest acquisition to date in 2004 when it purchased Inet Technologies Inc.
Early History
Tektronix was founded by three U.S. Coast Guard veterans and an electronics expert from the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Portland native Melvin Jack Murdock spent World War II as a Coast Guardsman, maintaining radio equipment for the Navy and planning for a career once the war ended. By 1945, he had convinced two friends, Glenn Leland and Miles Tippery, that the three of them should start their own business, although none had an idea exactly what that business should be. They also decided to bring in Charles Howard Vollum, a graduate of Portland's Reed University with a degree in physics who had operated a radio repair business in the back room of an appliance store Murdock had owned before the war. Vollum was then designing radar sighting devices for the Signal Corps.
In December 1945 the four servicemen met in Portland to draft articles of incorporation for a broadly defined company that would manufacture, sell, install, repair, "and otherwise handle and dispose of" electronic equipment. They called their company Tekrad, which was incorporated on January 2, 1946. Vollum was president and Murdock vice-president. The name was changed to Tektronix, Inc., a month later when they learned about a California company that had registered a similar name, Techrad.
Although Tektronix was still without a specific product or purpose, Vollum decided to build an oscilloscope from spare electronics parts being stockpiled by his partners from postwar government surplus sales. At the time, the Du Mont Company was the leading manufacturer of oscilloscopes, which were indispensable to the rapidly growing electronics industry. Vollum, who had built his first oscilloscope while in college, believed he could design one that was better and would sell for less than half what Du Mont charged. Vollum later told Forbes that Du Mont "wanted to fool around with big-time television. They were complacent about their scope."
Vollum completed his oscilloscope in the spring of 1946. It was far more accurate than anything then on the market. Unfortunately, it also was so large that it covered Vollum's entire workbench. He immediately began working on a more compact model, and Murdock brought in another buddy from the Coast Guard, a machinist named Milt Bave, to help with the design. The redesign took 12 months, but in May 1947 Tektronix sold the first "portable" oscilloscope to the University of Oregon Medical School. The model 511, which became known as the Vollumscope, weighed 50 pounds.
In 1947 Tektronix had sales of $27,000. The next year, sales increased almost tenfold, to $257,000, and the customer list included most of the major electronics research firms in the United States, including Hewlett-Packard, Philco Radio Corporation, RCA Laboratories Division, Westinghouse Electric Company, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1948 Tektronix also sold its first oscilloscope overseas, to the L. M. Ericcson Telephone Company of Sweden. By 1950, Tektronix was manufacturing its seventh generation of oscilloscopes, the model 517. Orders were backlogged six months to a year, and annual sales had exceeded $1 million.
Tek Culture Leading to Success: 1950-70
By the early 1950s, Murdock was already beginning to lose interest in managing Tektronix. He took up flying and started an aircraft sales company on the side.
-----
From the Monday, May 17, 1971 Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington:
Headline: Co-founder of Tektronix feared dead
Search was continuing today for the body of Jack Murdock, 53, of Vancouver, who is missing and presumed drowned in the Columbia River near Maryhill.
Murdock, co-founder and chairman of the board of Tektronix, Inc., Oregon's largest manufacturing firm, was piloting a seaplane which reportedly overturned while attempting to take off from the Columbia Sunday afternoon.
Klickitat County sheriff's office reported today at Goldendale that an aerial search will be under way when weather permits. The search this morning was on the ground.
Naomi Hamblin, 34, of Portland, a passenger in Murdock's seaplane, was able to swim to shore from the overturned plane.
United Press International reported that both occupants of the plane clung to the pontoons after the crash, seemingly waiting for the overturned craft to drift closer to shore.
They began swimming toward shore later, but Murdock turned back toward the plane about halfway to the bank. He was last seen being pulled under by the river's current, the State Patrol informed UPI.
Witnesses reported the seaplane landed on the river about 3 p.m. and was attempting to take off a few minutes later when the accident occurred.
Murdock was co-founder of Tektronix in 1946 with Howard Vollum, and had been a director of that firm since the beginning.
He was secretary-treasurer of Textronix for most of the time from 1946 to 1960, and was elected chairman of the board in 1960.
Tektronix has approximately 9,000 employees world-wide, including around 7,000 at Beaverton, Ore. The company manufactures oscilloscopes.
Murdock's office had been at Pearson Airpark for many years.
He was president and sole owner of Pacific Northwest Aviation Co., which is said to be a small privately-owned firm.
Before World War II he was in the electrical appliance and radio business in Portland on a retail basis. Murdock served in the Coast Guard during World War II.
The seaplane in Sunday's accident has been tied up at Maryhill awaiting investigation by federal aviation officials.
-----
Movie on the life of Jack Murdock
MJ Murdock - His Life
Jack's autobiography that he wrote when he was 16
Work and Human Satisfaction - A speech by Jack Murdock presented at a 1966 Portland Chamber of Commerce seminar
National Transportation Safety Board accident report
Jack never married and he had no close family members when he died. Jack was the cofounder of Tektronix, Inc. He drowned after a floatplane accident in Klickitat County, Washington, in the Columbia River. He was taxiing for takeoff in rough water on a Sunday afternoon when his Piper "Super Cub" floatplane nosed over in the water. Jack presumably drowned after the accident; his body was never recovered. It took four years to probate his estate. His estate of approximately 80 million dollars went to the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust in 1975. Here is their biography on Jack:
Jack Murdock was born in Portland, Oregon, on August 15, 1917. Upon graduating from Franklin High School, Jack chose, with help from his parents, to go into business rather than to pursue a college education. He purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. There, in 1936, he began a long-term working relationship with his technician, Howard Vollum, which resulted in the pair becoming principal co-founders of Tektronix in 1946 in Beaverton, Oregon. This course of development was interrupted only by Jack's brief stint in the U. S. Coast Guard during World War II.
Jack first served as Vice President and General Manager of Tektronix. Then, in 1960, he was elected Chairman of the Board, a position he held until his untimely death on May 16, 1971. Tektronix, Inc., with headquarters presently in Wilsonville, Oregon, has become one of the world's prominent electronic instrumentation companies and a major employer in Oregon. While the Trust is proud of its Tektronix heritage, it is an independent private foundation with no connection with the company.
Jack had a number of interests beyond Tektronix. One of these was Oregon Bulb Farms, which grew high grade Asiatic/Oriental Lilies commercially. Another was a Piper distributorship for the Pacific Northwest, operating out of Pearson Field in Vancouver. He was a pilot and his favorite plane was a Piper Super Cub. He was intensely interested in aviation safety and initiated a number of modifications of aircraft to make them safer and more serviceable to pilots. His love of aviation brought him to an untimely death at the age of 53 in a float plane accident on the Columbia River.
Jack Murdock was both an idealist and a realist and a life-long seeker of new insights. He believed in science as a main source of knowledge, and knowledge as a key ingredient to addressing and solving the issues and challenges of our world. He was thoroughly unpretentious, soft-spoken, and a listener. He possessed a rare combination of good judgment, hard work, tolerance, life-long learning, and scrupulous honesty. He practiced philanthropy through his own private foundation that existed until the Murdock Trust was formed.
-----
Evergreen Aviation Museum's tribute to Jack:
Jack Murdock believed in science as a main source of knowledge and the key to resolving issues. Convincing his parents to help him start a business rather than pay for a college education, he purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. No one was surprised when in 1946, he and his technician, Howard Vollum, exploited their small radio and appliance shop to found Tektronix, Inc. -- now one of the world's most prominent electronic instrumentation companies. A Portland, Oregon native, private pilot and aviation buff, Murdock believed deeply in philanthropy and helped fund Northwest education and scientific research wherever he could. Murdock once operated a Piper aircraft distributorship at Pearson Field in Vancouver. With a strong interest in aviation safety, he initiated a umber of aircraft modifications, making them safer and more serviceable to pilots. The SuperCub was his favorite plane. Subsequent to his untimely death in a floatplane crash on the Columbia River in 1971, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust was established in 1975 per Murdock's will. Focusing its funds to grantmaking allocations in the Pacific Northwest, the Murdock Trust mission focuses on enriching quality of life by funding organizations seeking to strengthen the educational and cultural programs in creative and sustainable ways. The Trust is now one of the five largest private foundations in the Northwest. It funded the creation of the Jack Murdock Aviation Center at Pearson Field in Vancouver as a lasting tribute to his life.
-----
From the Columbian, Clark County Ancestors:
Melvin J. "Jack" Murdock was the man nobody here knew before he died in an airplane accident in 1971.
Since his demise, Murdock's name has become one of the most famous in Vancouver. It is attached to an industrial park at 1115 S.E. 164th Ave., an office building and plaza on Broadway in downtown Vancouver, and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, based in Vancouver.
Murdock, a native of Portland, had lived in Vancouver for at least 12 years before his death, but was a somewhat private person who remained out of the public eye. He had lived in a mansion at 5601 Buena Vista Drive for the last decade of his life, but only his closest neighbors knew it.
Murdock built his fortune as a co-founder of Tektronix with Howard Vollum in 1946. The firm grew to become the world's largest producer of oscilloscopes and other electronic items.
On Sunday, May 16, 1971, Murdock, then 53, was piloting a seaplane which lost power and overturned in the Columbia River near Maryhill. A companion swam ashore, but the current dragged Murdock beneath the water. His body was never recovered.
Although no trace of the missing man could be found, Murdock was declared legally dead by Clark County Superior Court on June 11, 1971, less than a month after the accident. Murdock's will was then read, and it was found he had left only token amounts to 17 relatives (Murdock was a bachelor with no immediate relatives), with the remainder of his estate, estimated at more than $80 million, to go into a charitable foundation.
The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust was started in 1975 with assets of more than $90. Today, the trust assets are estimated at more than $200 million, although over the past 14 years more than $100 million has been distributed to nonprofit programs throughout the Northwest.
About 1,200 requests for money from the trust are studied each year by the trust staff, which operates from offices in the M.J. Murdock Executive Plaza, 703 Broadway, Vancouver. Of these, fewer than 10 percent are awarded grants.
-----
The early years of Textronix from Hoover's Profile of the company:
Tektronix, Inc., founded in 1946, is the world's second largest supplier of electronic testing and measuring devices. The company develops, manufactures, and markets oscilloscopes--instruments used to measure and display electrical signals--as well as logic analyzers, signal sources, spectrum analyzers, and communication and video test equipment. Tektronix serves many industries, including computing, communications, semiconductors, education, government, military, aerospace, research, automotive, and consumer electronics. The company spent the majority of the 1990s restructuring and eventually split itself into two major divisions in 1999. Xerox bought its printer operations, leaving it focused on its testing and measuring devices. Tektronix made its largest acquisition to date in 2004 when it purchased Inet Technologies Inc.
Early History
Tektronix was founded by three U.S. Coast Guard veterans and an electronics expert from the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Portland native Melvin Jack Murdock spent World War II as a Coast Guardsman, maintaining radio equipment for the Navy and planning for a career once the war ended. By 1945, he had convinced two friends, Glenn Leland and Miles Tippery, that the three of them should start their own business, although none had an idea exactly what that business should be. They also decided to bring in Charles Howard Vollum, a graduate of Portland's Reed University with a degree in physics who had operated a radio repair business in the back room of an appliance store Murdock had owned before the war. Vollum was then designing radar sighting devices for the Signal Corps.
In December 1945 the four servicemen met in Portland to draft articles of incorporation for a broadly defined company that would manufacture, sell, install, repair, "and otherwise handle and dispose of" electronic equipment. They called their company Tekrad, which was incorporated on January 2, 1946. Vollum was president and Murdock vice-president. The name was changed to Tektronix, Inc., a month later when they learned about a California company that had registered a similar name, Techrad.
Although Tektronix was still without a specific product or purpose, Vollum decided to build an oscilloscope from spare electronics parts being stockpiled by his partners from postwar government surplus sales. At the time, the Du Mont Company was the leading manufacturer of oscilloscopes, which were indispensable to the rapidly growing electronics industry. Vollum, who had built his first oscilloscope while in college, believed he could design one that was better and would sell for less than half what Du Mont charged. Vollum later told Forbes that Du Mont "wanted to fool around with big-time television. They were complacent about their scope."
Vollum completed his oscilloscope in the spring of 1946. It was far more accurate than anything then on the market. Unfortunately, it also was so large that it covered Vollum's entire workbench. He immediately began working on a more compact model, and Murdock brought in another buddy from the Coast Guard, a machinist named Milt Bave, to help with the design. The redesign took 12 months, but in May 1947 Tektronix sold the first "portable" oscilloscope to the University of Oregon Medical School. The model 511, which became known as the Vollumscope, weighed 50 pounds.
In 1947 Tektronix had sales of $27,000. The next year, sales increased almost tenfold, to $257,000, and the customer list included most of the major electronics research firms in the United States, including Hewlett-Packard, Philco Radio Corporation, RCA Laboratories Division, Westinghouse Electric Company, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1948 Tektronix also sold its first oscilloscope overseas, to the L. M. Ericcson Telephone Company of Sweden. By 1950, Tektronix was manufacturing its seventh generation of oscilloscopes, the model 517. Orders were backlogged six months to a year, and annual sales had exceeded $1 million.
Tek Culture Leading to Success: 1950-70
By the early 1950s, Murdock was already beginning to lose interest in managing Tektronix. He took up flying and started an aircraft sales company on the side.
-----
From the Monday, May 17, 1971 Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington:
Headline: Co-founder of Tektronix feared dead
Search was continuing today for the body of Jack Murdock, 53, of Vancouver, who is missing and presumed drowned in the Columbia River near Maryhill.
Murdock, co-founder and chairman of the board of Tektronix, Inc., Oregon's largest manufacturing firm, was piloting a seaplane which reportedly overturned while attempting to take off from the Columbia Sunday afternoon.
Klickitat County sheriff's office reported today at Goldendale that an aerial search will be under way when weather permits. The search this morning was on the ground.
Naomi Hamblin, 34, of Portland, a passenger in Murdock's seaplane, was able to swim to shore from the overturned plane.
United Press International reported that both occupants of the plane clung to the pontoons after the crash, seemingly waiting for the overturned craft to drift closer to shore.
They began swimming toward shore later, but Murdock turned back toward the plane about halfway to the bank. He was last seen being pulled under by the river's current, the State Patrol informed UPI.
Witnesses reported the seaplane landed on the river about 3 p.m. and was attempting to take off a few minutes later when the accident occurred.
Murdock was co-founder of Tektronix in 1946 with Howard Vollum, and had been a director of that firm since the beginning.
He was secretary-treasurer of Textronix for most of the time from 1946 to 1960, and was elected chairman of the board in 1960.
Tektronix has approximately 9,000 employees world-wide, including around 7,000 at Beaverton, Ore. The company manufactures oscilloscopes.
Murdock's office had been at Pearson Airpark for many years.
He was president and sole owner of Pacific Northwest Aviation Co., which is said to be a small privately-owned firm.
Before World War II he was in the electrical appliance and radio business in Portland on a retail basis. Murdock served in the Coast Guard during World War II.
The seaplane in Sunday's accident has been tied up at Maryhill awaiting investigation by federal aviation officials.
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Movie on the life of Jack Murdock
MJ Murdock - His Life
Jack's autobiography that he wrote when he was 16
Work and Human Satisfaction - A speech by Jack Murdock presented at a 1966 Portland Chamber of Commerce seminar
National Transportation Safety Board accident report
Jack Murdock was born in Portland, Oregon, on August 15, 1917. Upon graduating from Franklin High School, Jack chose, with help from his parents, to go into business rather than to pursue a college education. He purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. There, in 1936, he began a long-term working relationship with his technician, Howard Vollum, which resulted in the pair becoming principal co-founders of Tektronix in 1946 in Beaverton, Oregon. This course of development was interrupted only by Jack's brief stint in the U. S. Coast Guard during World War II.
Jack first served as Vice President and General Manager of Tektronix. Then, in 1960, he was elected Chairman of the Board, a position he held until his untimely death on May 16, 1971. Tektronix, Inc., with headquarters presently in Wilsonville, Oregon, has become one of the world's prominent electronic instrumentation companies and a major employer in Oregon. While the Trust is proud of its Tektronix heritage, it is an independent private foundation with no connection with the company.
Jack had a number of interests beyond Tektronix. One of these was Oregon Bulb Farms, which grew high grade Asiatic/Oriental Lilies commercially. Another was a Piper distributorship for the Pacific Northwest, operating out of Pearson Field in Vancouver. He was a pilot and his favorite plane was a Piper Super Cub. He was intensely interested in aviation safety and initiated a number of modifications of aircraft to make them safer and more serviceable to pilots. His love of aviation brought him to an untimely death at the age of 53 in a float plane accident on the Columbia River.
Jack Murdock was both an idealist and a realist and a life-long seeker of new insights. He believed in science as a main source of knowledge, and knowledge as a key ingredient to addressing and solving the issues and challenges of our world. He was thoroughly unpretentious, soft-spoken, and a listener. He possessed a rare combination of good judgment, hard work, tolerance, life-long learning, and scrupulous honesty. He practiced philanthropy through his own private foundation that existed until the Murdock Trust was formed.
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Evergreen Aviation Museum's tribute to Jack:
Jack Murdock believed in science as a main source of knowledge and the key to resolving issues. Convincing his parents to help him start a business rather than pay for a college education, he purchased a shop for the sale and service of radios and electrical appliances. No one was surprised when in 1946, he and his technician, Howard Vollum, exploited their small radio and appliance shop to found Tektronix, Inc. -- now one of the world's most prominent electronic instrumentation companies. A Portland, Oregon native, private pilot and aviation buff, Murdock believed deeply in philanthropy and helped fund Northwest education and scientific research wherever he could. Murdock once operated a Piper aircraft distributorship at Pearson Field in Vancouver. With a strong interest in aviation safety, he initiated a umber of aircraft modifications, making them safer and more serviceable to pilots. The SuperCub was his favorite plane. Subsequent to his untimely death in a floatplane crash on the Columbia River in 1971, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust was established in 1975 per Murdock's will. Focusing its funds to grantmaking allocations in the Pacific Northwest, the Murdock Trust mission focuses on enriching quality of life by funding organizations seeking to strengthen the educational and cultural programs in creative and sustainable ways. The Trust is now one of the five largest private foundations in the Northwest. It funded the creation of the Jack Murdock Aviation Center at Pearson Field in Vancouver as a lasting tribute to his life.
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From the Columbian, Clark County Ancestors:
Melvin J. "Jack" Murdock was the man nobody here knew before he died in an airplane accident in 1971.
Since his demise, Murdock's name has become one of the most famous in Vancouver. It is attached to an industrial park at 1115 S.E. 164th Ave., an office building and plaza on Broadway in downtown Vancouver, and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, based in Vancouver.
Murdock, a native of Portland, had lived in Vancouver for at least 12 years before his death, but was a somewhat private person who remained out of the public eye. He had lived in a mansion at 5601 Buena Vista Drive for the last decade of his life, but only his closest neighbors knew it.
Murdock built his fortune as a co-founder of Tektronix with Howard Vollum in 1946. The firm grew to become the world's largest producer of oscilloscopes and other electronic items.
On Sunday, May 16, 1971, Murdock, then 53, was piloting a seaplane which lost power and overturned in the Columbia River near Maryhill. A companion swam ashore, but the current dragged Murdock beneath the water. His body was never recovered.
Although no trace of the missing man could be found, Murdock was declared legally dead by Clark County Superior Court on June 11, 1971, less than a month after the accident. Murdock's will was then read, and it was found he had left only token amounts to 17 relatives (Murdock was a bachelor with no immediate relatives), with the remainder of his estate, estimated at more than $80 million, to go into a charitable foundation.
The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust was started in 1975 with assets of more than $90. Today, the trust assets are estimated at more than $200 million, although over the past 14 years more than $100 million has been distributed to nonprofit programs throughout the Northwest.
About 1,200 requests for money from the trust are studied each year by the trust staff, which operates from offices in the M.J. Murdock Executive Plaza, 703 Broadway, Vancouver. Of these, fewer than 10 percent are awarded grants.
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The early years of Textronix from Hoover's Profile of the company:
Tektronix, Inc., founded in 1946, is the world's second largest supplier of electronic testing and measuring devices. The company develops, manufactures, and markets oscilloscopes--instruments used to measure and display electrical signals--as well as logic analyzers, signal sources, spectrum analyzers, and communication and video test equipment. Tektronix serves many industries, including computing, communications, semiconductors, education, government, military, aerospace, research, automotive, and consumer electronics. The company spent the majority of the 1990s restructuring and eventually split itself into two major divisions in 1999. Xerox bought its printer operations, leaving it focused on its testing and measuring devices. Tektronix made its largest acquisition to date in 2004 when it purchased Inet Technologies Inc.
Early History
Tektronix was founded by three U.S. Coast Guard veterans and an electronics expert from the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Portland native Melvin Jack Murdock spent World War II as a Coast Guardsman, maintaining radio equipment for the Navy and planning for a career once the war ended. By 1945, he had convinced two friends, Glenn Leland and Miles Tippery, that the three of them should start their own business, although none had an idea exactly what that business should be. They also decided to bring in Charles Howard Vollum, a graduate of Portland's Reed University with a degree in physics who had operated a radio repair business in the back room of an appliance store Murdock had owned before the war. Vollum was then designing radar sighting devices for the Signal Corps.
In December 1945 the four servicemen met in Portland to draft articles of incorporation for a broadly defined company that would manufacture, sell, install, repair, "and otherwise handle and dispose of" electronic equipment. They called their company Tekrad, which was incorporated on January 2, 1946. Vollum was president and Murdock vice-president. The name was changed to Tektronix, Inc., a month later when they learned about a California company that had registered a similar name, Techrad.
Although Tektronix was still without a specific product or purpose, Vollum decided to build an oscilloscope from spare electronics parts being stockpiled by his partners from postwar government surplus sales. At the time, the Du Mont Company was the leading manufacturer of oscilloscopes, which were indispensable to the rapidly growing electronics industry. Vollum, who had built his first oscilloscope while in college, believed he could design one that was better and would sell for less than half what Du Mont charged. Vollum later told Forbes that Du Mont "wanted to fool around with big-time television. They were complacent about their scope."
Vollum completed his oscilloscope in the spring of 1946. It was far more accurate than anything then on the market. Unfortunately, it also was so large that it covered Vollum's entire workbench. He immediately began working on a more compact model, and Murdock brought in another buddy from the Coast Guard, a machinist named Milt Bave, to help with the design. The redesign took 12 months, but in May 1947 Tektronix sold the first "portable" oscilloscope to the University of Oregon Medical School. The model 511, which became known as the Vollumscope, weighed 50 pounds.
In 1947 Tektronix had sales of $27,000. The next year, sales increased almost tenfold, to $257,000, and the customer list included most of the major electronics research firms in the United States, including Hewlett-Packard, Philco Radio Corporation, RCA Laboratories Division, Westinghouse Electric Company, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1948 Tektronix also sold its first oscilloscope overseas, to the L. M. Ericcson Telephone Company of Sweden. By 1950, Tektronix was manufacturing its seventh generation of oscilloscopes, the model 517. Orders were backlogged six months to a year, and annual sales had exceeded $1 million.
Tek Culture Leading to Success: 1950-70
By the early 1950s, Murdock was already beginning to lose interest in managing Tektronix. He took up flying and started an aircraft sales company on the side.
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From the Monday, May 17, 1971 Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington:
Headline: Co-founder of Tektronix feared dead
Search was continuing today for the body of Jack Murdock, 53, of Vancouver, who is missing and presumed drowned in the Columbia River near Maryhill.
Murdock, co-founder and chairman of the board of Tektronix, Inc., Oregon's largest manufacturing firm, was piloting a seaplane which reportedly overturned while attempting to take off from the Columbia Sunday afternoon.
Klickitat County sheriff's office reported today at Goldendale that an aerial search will be under way when weather permits. The search this morning was on the ground.
Naomi Hamblin, 34, of Portland, a passenger in Murdock's seaplane, was able to swim to shore from the overturned plane.
United Press International reported that both occupants of the plane clung to the pontoons after the crash, seemingly waiting for the overturned craft to drift closer to shore.
They began swimming toward shore later, but Murdock turned back toward the plane about halfway to the bank. He was last seen being pulled under by the river's current, the State Patrol informed UPI.
Witnesses reported the seaplane landed on the river about 3 p.m. and was attempting to take off a few minutes later when the accident occurred.
Murdock was co-founder of Tektronix in 1946 with Howard Vollum, and had been a director of that firm since the beginning.
He was secretary-treasurer of Textronix for most of the time from 1946 to 1960, and was elected chairman of the board in 1960.
Tektronix has approximately 9,000 employees world-wide, including around 7,000 at Beaverton, Ore. The company manufactures oscilloscopes.
Murdock's office had been at Pearson Airpark for many years.
He was president and sole owner of Pacific Northwest Aviation Co., which is said to be a small privately-owned firm.
Before World War II he was in the electrical appliance and radio business in Portland on a retail basis. Murdock served in the Coast Guard during World War II.
The seaplane in Sunday's accident has been tied up at Maryhill awaiting investigation by federal aviation officials.
-----
Movie on the life of Jack Murdock
MJ Murdock - His Life
Jack's autobiography that he wrote when he was 16
Work and Human Satisfaction - A speech by Jack Murdock presented at a 1966 Portland Chamber of Commerce seminar
National Transportation Safety Board accident report
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