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Oral History of Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson

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Oral History of Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson Oral History of Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson Interviewed by: Gardner Hendrie Recorded: May 14, 2010 Boston, Massachusetts CHM Reference number: X5815.2010 © 2010 Computer History Museum Oral History of Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson Gardner Hendrie: With us today is Ted Johnson who has graciously agreed to do an oral history for the Computer History Museum. Thank you very much, Ted. Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson: You’re welcome. Hendrie: You’ve done an autobiography which has a lot of detail about your early life, but I’d just like to get just some summary details on this transcript before we get into your career at Digital [Equipment Corporation]. Maybe you could just briefly tell us a little bit about your parents and where you grew up and what they did and any siblings you had; just a little background. Johnson: I was born in Iron Mountain, Michigan, and I lived there until I was 22 or so. My parents were Swedish origin, especially on my father’s side. My grandfather was born in Dalsland, Sweden. They were the first to immigrate over here and went into the iron mining business largely. That was the basis of my hometown: Iron Mountain, Michigan. At one point, it was the leading place for making iron ore for the country, until they discovered the Mesabi Range. My father was a grocer. My grandfather started farming here but then quickly started a company called Anderson and Johnson; Swedish food with Italian customers. Hendrie: <laughs> Johnson: Turns out <laughs> most of the Swedes left and the Italians stayed. So he was stuck with an Italian group. So I was raised in Italian town basically. My mother, she came from a family of Swede Finns. They were Swedish speaking. My whole family was Swedish speaking. We belonged to the Swedish Lutheran Church, for instance. They came from a small town, Fiala [ph?], in Finland. I went back there and visited them as well as my Swedish grandparents. I was just raised basically in a Swedish-speaking environment. Hendrie: Did your parents speak Swedish to you at all? Johnson: Oh, yes. Hendrie: So you understood. You learned. Johnson: Well, I should’ve learned more. They never made an effort to teach anybody Swedish, so none of my cousins could speak any Swedish, except little bits that we picked up in jokes and things like that. My father had a sister, identical twin, who’s very funny and very open and very humorous. She used to like to tell us Swedish jokes. It was a good hardworking Swedish family. My grandfather started a grocery store, Anderson and Johnson. My father basically managed that store for many, many years, until he finally sold it after my grandfather died a few years before that. What am I missing? CHM Ref: X5815.2010 © 2010 Computer History Museum Page 2 of 59 Oral History of Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson Hendrie: Siblings. Johnson: Oh, siblings. I have one sister; my sister Jean, who’s younger than I am. She stayed at Iron Mountain and worked as a telephone operator and things of that sort. Basically, I was raised with cousins and friends, not family much. More about Iron Mountain? Hendrie: Let’s talk a little bit about your early schooling. Where did you go to school in elementary school and then high school? Johnson: Well, I stayed in the Iron Mountain school system. I went to Washington School, first Amidon School for half a year up in the North Side, which is where the Italians live and where our store was. But we moved down to the East Side where all the Swedes were <laughs>. I started off well in school. Second grade, I had a very good teacher. She found I had an artistic bent. I was doing a lot of things like that. I started painting in all my classes. Became a big part of my grade school life anyway. Then I became a musician. I did very well at the piano. Hendrie: When did you learn to play the piano? Who got you started? Did your mother have piano lessons for you? Johnson: Oh, I had piano lessons, but I took them from my cousin’s teacher. He was two years older than I was, and he and I were very close. We were very good friends. We played duets together in the cold winter day afternoons. We’d go skiing in the afternoon and come back and play duets. I learned how to sight read because he was much better than I was at least at the beginning. Music became a very big part of my life. It turned out the environment was good, too, because my Swedish-Lutheran parents and environment were very, very supportive of music. I think I had plenty of opportunity to perform and to display what I’d learned. So that was a very big part of me. I started in high school becoming a professional piano player. I learned that just by playing in a job one night, finding I could get paid for it. So <laughs> I started playing with bands and things while I was going through high school. In fact, we even had a trio, the GAT Trio [ph?]. We played for dances and all kinds of things like that. Hendrie: Oh, that’s very cool. Johnson: Yes, it was nice. Hendrie: How young were you when you took up the piano and started playing? Johnson: I guess I was eight. Hendrie: You were eight? CHM Ref: X5815.2010 © 2010 Computer History Museum Page 3 of 59 Oral History of Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson Johnson: Eight years old, yes. She was a very good teacher, Belle Browning. So I learned a lot, and I liked it a lot. It was a town where I could play a lot. There’s plenty of opportunities, including when I got into Boy Scouts and stuff like that. So I was always kind of a semi-star, you might say. Yes, it was very much a part of my life. Iron Mountain was a very musical town. Hendrie: Tell me about your first exposures to science and math. I think, from reading your autobiography, you clearly were interested in that sort of thing. So when did that happen? Johnson: When did that happen? Well, it started when I decided I want to go to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. That was a parting point. I decided I want to go to college at a technical school. Hendrie: But in high school, did you have any good teachers that inspired you about science and math or you just sort of took what was there and did well? Johnson: I had some good math teachers, people that I liked. But I was general purpose you might say. Some of my favorite teachers were English teachers, math teachers, science teachers, that sort of thing. I felt very fortunate. Reasonable education. But I didn’t really get very far in math. I mean, when I got to college and discovered calculus, I hadn’t even realized what that was before. Hendrie: <laughs> Johnson: <laughs> My roommate next to me all had had courses like that when they were at Brooklyn Polytech for instance, except I didn’t. So I had some catch-up to do. Hendrie: When you got there. Johnson: I didn’t stay there very long, though. But then I decided to go—I got sick, first of all, when I was at MIT. So after five weeks, I had to drop school and rest, part of that in a sanitarium, for two years. Then I started over again. I went to Caltech instead. Hendrie: What was the illness? Johnson: Well, basically it was pleural effusion, but the roots of that are TB [Tuberculosis]. They never were able to prove that to my satisfaction anyway, but they treated it that way. I had to rest a lot. Hendrie: Oh, my goodness, that’s hard. You just found out about that when you got to MIT? Johnson: I never realized it till I got to MIT. CHM Ref: X5815.2010 © 2010 Computer History Museum Page 4 of 59 Oral History of Theodore G. (Ted) Johnson Hendrie: Wow. Johnson: The summer before, I’d gotten sick. Well, I had an episode, anyway, where I was feeling very weak and everything. But I went off to school anyway, and I did fine at the beginning. I was playing piano for all kinds of events at MIT, too. Hendrie: What made you decide to go to an engineering school? What was the process that led you to pick MIT? Johnson: Well, it was the best in my opinion <laughs>. I got a scholarship when I was in high school. It was $1,000 a year. After I got sick, it became $2,000 a year. The tuition at Caltech, at that time, was only $600 a year. Now it’s $40,000 or something? Hendrie: Yes. Johnson: What was the question? Hendrie: I’m curious about how you decided you wanted to do engineering. What inspired you to pick that? You said you enjoyed lots of different courses and lots of different things. Johnson: I read a lot of books. I was very interested in a lot of technical people, the guy who started—I can’t even think of his name. I was always interested in my math courses at school and engineering. I realized that, being a poor kid, engineering was the best way to make a way in life.
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