Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments was founded by Cecil H. Green, J. Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott, and Patrick E. Haggerty in 1951. McDermott was one of the original founders of Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI) in 1930. McDermott, Green, and Jonsson were GSI employees who purchased the company in 1941. In November, 1945, Patrick Haggerty was hired as general manager of the Laboratory and Manufacturing (L&M) division, which focused on electronic equipment. By 1951, the L&M division, with its defense contracts, was growing faster than GSI's Geophysical division. The company was reorganized and initially renamed General Instruments Inc. Because there already existed a firm named General Instrument, the company was renamed Texas Instruments that same year. From 1956 to 1961, Fred Agnich of Dallas, later a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives, was the Texas Instruments president. Geophysical Service, Inc. became a subsidiary of Texas Instruments. Early in 1988 most of GSI was sold to the Halliburton Company.
Altair 8800
In addition to calculators, MITS made a line of test equipment kits. These included an IC tester, a waveform generator, a digital voltmeter, and several other instruments. To keep up with the demand, MITS moved into a larger building at 6328 Linn NE in Albuquerque in 1973. They installed a wave soldering machine and an assembly line at the new location. In 1972, Texas Instruments developed its own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at less than half the price of other commercial models. MITS and many other companies were devastated by this, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million-dollar debt.