Mike,
Believe it or not, I used to own an Ampex sweatshirt. They came out and installed some fancy new super dense data storage tape unit where I used to work and gave the shirts away. I believe Ampex was one of those many Silicon Valley high tech companies that prospered according to whether government funding was there or not. They started out, like so many in the valley, doing electronic warfare stuff. In particular, they were into radar components. Companies like that rarely transform successfully into outfits that do well with the larger consumer markets.
Back in the late 80's I was introduced to GPS in the workplace and could see oodles of applications for it. The only big outfit at the time(a spin-off from another Silicon Valley company, HP) was Trimble Navigation. When they went public(18 years ago, tomorrow), I didn't have a lot of money and it seems a bit expensive so I never bought, but I thought that TRMB was the one to have for a big appreciation play. Turns out that they couldn't transform their technology for use by Joe Sixpack either. It was that other outfit, Garmin(GRMN) who saw the light and executed to the tune of a 12 bagger in about 7 years from the time they went public in early 2001. So you never know what's going to happen in high tech. Usually, you get burned, but once in a while you get the ride of your life, like ANCR.
If you are interested in the history of companies like Ampex, HP, Fairchild, Argo Lockheed, ESL, GTE Syvania, and National Semiconductor, as well as interested in the history of WWII and the cold war with respect to all the electronic battles that took place, there's a youtube video of a lecture given by Steve Blank(a professor at Stanford who teaches entrepreneurship) called, The Secret History of Silicon Valley, here:
youtube.com
I think a lot of what's in that lecture is fairly recently declassified stuff.
Also, that 'under-the-radar' chatroom(MagChat.com) I've told you about that I participate in was started by the son of the project leader at Ampex that developed color videotape. One of the first things recorded on the new color recorder was the Nixon-Khrushchev 'kitchen debates', which had its 51st anniversary just last Saturday.
news.bbc.co.uk
But this was 1959. Were you investing money back before you were 10 years old or something?
craig |
