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Oral History – Joe D’Airo
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I
definitely had an interest. It runs in the family. My grandfather worked
briefly with Lee DeForest and was the "Airo" in the DeWald
Pierce-Airo radios. He had a TV repair shop in the early 50's and would
repair TVs on the side after that. I helped him. Got my ham license at age
13 and rag-chewed on 2 meters with my father's home-brew rig throught the
1970's. Published an article in Radio-Electronics in 1971. Now my
daughter Christina is Assistant Editor at Electronic Products Magazine.
Approximately
how many people worked at TA? Also, do you remember any other names of TA
employees?
Wild
guess that they had about 100 people in NY. Most of their production was
at Trans-World in Hong Kong. I visited that facility - it was on 2 floors,
but still not a very big operation. Don't know when they started, but they
didn't last much past 1968. The only other name that comes to mind is
Jimmy Taiano, who I understand was an owner and possibly facilities manager
in NY. Jerry Narasaki was another engineer, and Harold Sandler (of Radio
Receptor) was the manager. The Hong Kong manager was Lana Woo, and another
key person there was Lou Daniels, though I’m not sure of his role.
When
large volumes of surplus transistors were bought, how did these arrive? It
appears that GE, Raytheon and Fairchild were the largest suppliers.
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Oral History – Joe D’Airo
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Looking at
some pictures online, and from what I remember, early on they bought mostly
Raytheon, the blue flat cans and later the subminiature hearing-aid types.
Around 1965 they were buying barrels-full of the GE TO-5 parts. Later they
bought the Fairchild parts, both the plastics and the 2N718. I just
picked-up a Harlie on Ebay and it has Motorola TO-92 transistors and some
of the similar GE plastic parts with the round base and flat body (TO-98).
The Motorola parts were from the MPS6535 family, which were basically
fallouts from the MPS2222 series.
Nearly all
the parts were bought in bulk and tested/sorted at TA. Presumably they did
this in Hong Kong as well. I can't estimate how many transistors they were
using per year, but maybe I can estimate how many fit in a 55-gal drum!
Looking back, I wonder how anxious the vendors were to have TA as a
customer, since they never bought any prime parts, only fallouts. On the
other hand, it was probably a profitable way for GE, Fairchild, Motorola,
etc. to sell their "garbage" !!
Go
To D'Airo Oral History, Page 5
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