Ken Johnston

Ken Johnston

Joined IRE 1948

IEEE Life Member

• Responsible for the installation and maintenance of 35 mm sound and projection equipment
• Adapted 250 V 50 Hz Gaumont Kalee equipment to the 110 V 25 Hz local power grid, and certified to Canadian safety standards.

• Responsible for government accounts in Ottawa area. (This was the cold war era and everyone was worried about a Soviet atomic bomber attack over the North Pole.)
• Contributed to the design of Philips Geiger tubes.
• Responsible for the manufacture of a hand held battery operated radiation detection instrument made using Philips tubes by Canadian Admiral Corp.
• Responsible for introducing photo-multipliers used at National Research Council and in the physics departments of various universities.
• Helped in the development of the Trans-Canada microwave transmission system (in the era before satellites) by the application of Mullard travelling wave tube.
• Helped in the development of increased power for local broadcast radio stations by applying appropriate Philips and Amperex tubes.
• Provided sales support on specialised applications to various companies, such as Northern Telecom, Gandalf and Computing Devices Corp.
• Contributed to the procurement and quality of Canada's CANDU nuclear reactor at Chalk River operated by Atomic Energy Commission of Canada Limited (AECL).
• Provided technical training on Mullard travelling wave tube to engineers at Raleigh Industrial Park in North Carolina.

• Was national sales manager for the introduction of a Canadian subsidiary.
• Obtained the contract to supply night vision goggles manufactured by Roan Oak, Virginia factory. (This was the time of the abduction of P. Laporte and the FLQ crisis.)
• With the introduction of UHF channels to television, Klystron application took much development. The competition was the Varion red tube and extensive evaluations were made comparing it to the ITT England blue tube.
• Promoted the use of low-loss, low-cost tantalum capacitors.

• Developed applications for Silicon-carbide varistors.
• Developed applications for metal-oxide-varistors (MOV) with particular emphasis on telephony applications. (This was the time of the Carterphone decision and the breakup of the AT&T monopoly introduced a lot of new manufacturers who lacked teh ability to meet the network access arrangement requirements.)
• Developed new markets by the introduction of Stetron designed automotive relays to Ford Motor Company for the new concept of daylight running lights. Worked with engineers in Dearborn, Michigan during approval process. (This was at the point in time when "Japanese quality" was a major competitive argument.)

• Provide contract consulting.
• Still write technical analysis for data sheets for Stetron

Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE and SMPTE) (Life Member)