The Machlett Laboratories sat in the Springdale section of Stamford, CT, right on Hope street. It's effectively gone now, all the equipment sold and some of the buildings sold. I think that the Raytheon, Machlett's parent company, still owns the main building that fronted Hope St. This main building was a brick monstrosity that held all the ovens, glassmaking equipment, everything necessary to make X-ray tubes, and above that dirty, hot environment sat the Executive offices. In all actuality you could take a flight of stairs from a section of hot, dirty factory (in the summer, close to some descriptions of hell) and find executive row at the top. There were also at least 2 buildings across a side street. Those two buildings were where I spent my whole time at Machlett.
I remember my interview there. If there was any time when Murphy's Law acted to anyone's benefit, it was there. First off, I came in there with an attitude. I was looking for a job, I wouldn't leave Picker until I had one, and I wanted close to home. Picker was a 20 minute ride from home. The head-hunter told me it was a 15 minute ride. That's what I heard...it was a 50 minute ride. So I was already pissed off that this place was so far away. Plus it was my first experience of the Merritt Parkway. The Merritt was an old 'highway' built in the 20's and 30's whose original speed limit was 35 mph. Now it was 55 on the same road. The traffic, especially during rush hour, had a rhythm all its own...mainly stopped. Then I stopped at a Personnel office that was hardly cleaner than the factory with a grand total of two ancient occupants. Redmond Toner (his real name) was the manager and one wonderful lady as secretary, who did ALL the work. Rem Toner was a real piece of work. He was in his fifties and pretty much already retired. He did literally nothing. But that will give you an idea of Machlett. The whole culture was based on the past. Due to layoffs and miscues, very few people under the age of 40 worked at Machlett.
After that I was lead to the department I was applying for. We walked across the street to a concrete block building that was last painted in the 30's. The Imaging department was housed in the back of this converted warehouse. Raytheon and Machlett did everything cheaply. They merely slapped some industrial grade reject linoleum over the concrete floor and created 'offices' and work areas. Usually after about an hour or so walking around, you'd be covered in concrete dust from the knees down. I called it magic dust, it just magically appeared every day.
The imaging department was a 'huge' department consisting of 4 people: The manager, Tony Balletta, a mechanical engineer, Lou Agro, a mechanical draftsman, Jessie, an electrical engineer (who I was to replace) and a technician, Bob Romeo. I hit it off real well with my boss to be...we had an argument in my interview. I also interviewed with Tony's boss, the engineering manager, Frank DeCou. As I was to find out later, it was Frank who really hired me, Tony didn't want me. HOWEVER, several months later, when Machlett began the Raytheon Digital Imaging Project, Tony actually went up to the president of the company to fight to keep me in his department rather than have them transfer me to that project. Somehow in the 5 years at Picker, I had become a good engineer and I never realized my potential until I got to Machlett, where they weren't afraid to tell me I was doing a good job. In the 4 1/2 years at Machlett, my performance reviews were simple: "Keep up the good work and sorry we can't give a higher raise". And they would say this as they handed me increases of 10 to 15% per year!
I did pull one subtle bit of subterfuge when I first started there. I was still in the Picker Bowling League (because the season was already well underway and I had started when I was still at Picker), but it started early on Monday night...about 5. If I left Machlett in Stamford on time, I would probably arrive in North Haven in roughly 1 1/2 hours or probably halfway through the 2nd game. So I told them I had 'class' and had to leave early. At the time I was finishing up my Master's at UNH (University of New Haven), so it was not *really* a total lie.
Also in the back of the same warehouse was Image Intensifier Engineering. The Image Intensifier, and you still see lots of them around is a huge tube that converts X-rays to light, which is then viewed by a TV camera. Actually Machlett still made II tubes with mirror viewers, for the cheap doctors. Well, at that time I was always looking for someone to play chess, and one of the II Engineers, his name was Phil said that 'Oh, we'll play one of these days.' I remember this because a couple of weeks later he just suddenly died. A lot of us were shocked.
On incident that really brought home to me how well I had advanced in being an engineer was a trouble-shooting job. A old TV camera had come in for repair. It was only showing white. Bob was working on it and had help from our boss, and spent all morning on it--about 4 hours. They had focused on the preamp and Tony even had Bob changing the biasing on the transistors to make it work. But no dice. About 11:30 I wandered over to help. After about a half hour, getting up to speed and having Bob do some measurements, I found the problem. It wasn't the preamp, but a leaky coupling cap between the preamp and the rest of the circuit. Actually, that felt good.