User:Texliebmann/John Fluke Sr

John Maurice Fluke Sr.
Born	(1911-12-14)December 14, 1911 Tacoma, Washington
Died	February 11, 1984(1984-02-11) (aged 72) Seattle, Washington
Known for	John Fluke Engineering Company / Fluke Corporation

John Maurice Fluke Sr. (1911 – 1984) was founder of the John Fluke Engineering Company, later known as Fluke Corporation, and was a pioneer in the Pacific Northwest electronics industry. He also was deeply involved in a wide range of industry, civic, and cultural affairs, and an outspoken advocate of free enterprise and education. He received several honors and awards for his contributions to the community, the state, and the electronics industry.

John Fluke Sr., a big man at 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) and 240 pounds (110 kg), was “crusty and outspoken”, not afraid to voice his opinions about global markets, free enterprise, the electronics industry, transportation, or the Defense Department.

Early Life

John M. Fluke was born on December 14, 1911, in Tacoma, Washington. His ancestors were German immigrants who first settled in Pennsylvania. His grandparents were farmers in Oregon. His parents moved to Tacoma about 1907. In 1916, when John was 5, his father died of appendicitis. John was a math and science whiz as a youngster. He was fascinated by electricity. He recalled, “As a teenager, I was enamored with the electrification system established by the Milwaukee Road... to get trains over mountains when steam-generated engines just couldn’t make it” . He graduated from Tacoma's Stadium High School in 1928 and helped supplement the family budget by various efforts including a newspaper route, working in a door plant, and working at the smelter on Commencement Bay.

Education and Early Career

John Fluke entered the University of Washington in 1930 and graduated in 1935 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. While at the university, he was a member of the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. He was a company commander in ROTC. Upon graduation, he received with a commission as an Ensign in the Naval Reserve. Due to the Great Depression, jobs were scarce, so John pursued post graduate education. He won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering in 1936.

Upon receiving his Masters, he found a job with General Electric in its Schenectady, New York plant. While at General Electric, he received a top engineering prize for his work with reducing the manufacturing cost of electrical-switch silver contacts. He roomed for about a year with a half-dozen other young engineers. Among them was David Packard (1912 – 1996). It was the start of a life-long friendship. Like John Fluke, Packard would go on to create a West Coast electronics empire with William Hewlett (1913 – 2001), also starting from a humble shop.

Military

World War II began in 1939. Ensign Fluke was called to active duty in 1940. He was assigned to the Navy’s Bureau of Ships electrical division in Washington, D.C.. He worked for the division's director, Captain (later Admiral) Hyman Rickover (1900 – 1986), the controversial “father of the nuclear navy.” For Fluke, working with Rickover was a life changing experience. Fluke was promoted to commander by age 32. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his work on a variety of difficult shipboard electrical-equipment problems. He was discharged in 1946.

John Fluke and Fluke Electronics

After the War, John rejected an offer to remain in the Navy with Rickover’s nuclear program. He also rejected an opportunity to return to General Electric. He chose instead to engage in a consulting-engineer capacity for American Machine and Foundry (AMF) in Buffalo, New York. He developed critical improvements in its automatic pin-setting machine for bowling alleys, for which he ultimately was granted eight patents. The AMF payoff was “substantial”.

In 1948 Fluke started the John Fluke Engineering Company in his basement workshop in the Springdale neighborhood of Stamford, Connecticut. He had two employees. His first product was an electronic power meter, and his first customer was General Electric.

In 1952, the company had grown to six employees. Fluke decided to return to the West Coast. He rejected advice from Packard, who was already a well-established Silicon Valley pioneer, to consider moving to Palo Alto, California. Packard asked him: “Why would you want to move your company to such an intellectual vacuum as Seattle?”. Fluke responded that he “just wanted to move home”. Fluke bought an old cabinet shop at 1111 W. Nickerson Street in Seattle, a couple of blocks east of the Ballard Bridge, and was soon back in full production after being shut down nearly a month for the move.

Fluke outgrew the Seattle shop and moved the company, first to Mountlake Terrace, Washington, a north Seattle suburb, and then again in 1981 present day in campus in Everett, about 30 miles north of Seattle. The Everett 500,000-square-foot campus cost $42 million.

Along the way, Fluke remained in the forefront of the exploding high-tech world, with newer and better measuring instruments. He acquired other companies and, as an early and strong supporter of foreign trade, expanded internationally. Fluke moved into the China market in 1973, soon after President Richard M. Nixon (1913 - 1994) made his historic visit to Beijing in 1972, signaling a revolutionary turn in United States Cold War policy.

In 1983, John Fluke Sr. turned the now-formidable firm over to his son, John Fluke Jr., who had spent his teen years and early adulthood in and around the company. The Fluke Corporation was sold in 1998 to the Danaher Corporation, a Washington, D.C., holding company.

Community

Education was one of John Fluke's primary concerns. Fluke served many years on the University of Washington College of Engineering Visiting Committee. In 1982 he donated $1 million to the University of Washington to fund a professorship in manufacturing engineering. He was also a major contributor to the $15.8-million Washington Technology Center built in 1988. Fluke Hall, houses the Washington Technology Center, the Center for Nanotechnology, and the NanoTech User Facility. It was designed to foster and commercialize research of benefit to companies in the State of Washington. His son, John Fluke Jr., was a 1964 graduate of the University of Washington Electrical Engineering Department.

John Fluke Sr. was a co-founder and first president of the South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce, chairman of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, a founding member of the Seattle Area Industrial Council, and a trustee of the Boy Scouts Chief Seattle Council, and was active in the Seattle Symphony and in a long list of other civic and cultural organizations. In 1966, when serving as chairman of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, he urged civic leaders to kill the “sacred cows” that were impeding the area’s progress and “spawned a transportation mess.” He lambasted “unreal taxing practices ... state and local governmental structures ... educational system,” and called for “streamlining of city and county government,” and “re-evaluating teachers’ efforts”. The Seattle-King County Association of Realtors named John Fluke Sr. first Citizen of 1978. In 1979, after a trip to Asia, he warned that Japan, South Korea, and other Far East nations “threaten to surpass ours unless we get off our "socialist binge" and become more productive”. Fluke was a founding member in 1983 of the Washington Roundtable, a pro-business reform group composed of the chief executives of the state’s largest corporations, as well as several other business-development groups. He was on the boards of many other civic, cultural, and business organizations, including the Seattle-King County Safety Council, Pacific Science Center Foundation, and Seattle Rotary. He was named in 1985 as one of the inductees to The Washington State Centennial Hall of Honor -- the 100 most influential figures in the state’s history who “made outstanding contributions of national or international significance”. The state Senate passed a resolution honoring his accomplishments. Fluke was a major supporter of Junior Achievement, and Lyla and John Fluke Jr. donated $1 million to Junior Achievement’s Free Enterprise Society in John Fluke Sr.’s memory, as well as a $1 million endowed professorship to the Stanford University College of Engineering. Lyla and her son, David Fluke, also made a $1 million gift to the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

Fluke remained a constant but constructive critic of the U.S. Defense Department and in 1970 served as the civilian chairman of a blue-ribbon panel appointed by then Defense Secretary Melvin Laird (b. 1922) to recommend improvements. Fluke said, “Defense buying by the D.O.D. was poorly organized, unnecessarily expensive, chaotic.” He said the Civil Service "has become too much of a home for tired employees. ... I would prefer the spoils systems. At least, the organization might get purged once in awhile".

In 1956, Fluke helped form the Northwest Electronics Manufacturers Association (NEMA), which merged with the Western Electronics Manufacturers Association in 1959, which, in turn, became the American Electronics Association (AeA) in 1978. The Washington, D.C. based AeA became the industry’s major lobbying arm.

Family

In 1937, John Fluke married his college sweetheart, Lyla Skram (1910 - 2010). The Flukes had three children: Virginia (Gabelein), John M. Jr., and David Lynd. John M. Fluke Sr. died on February 11, 1984 after suffering heart problems for many years. He was survived by his wife, daughter, two sons, and three grandchildren. John Fluke Sr.'s wife Lyla passed away on January 15, 2010 at her home in Seattle.

Of his father, John Fluke Jr. said, "He was my Dad, and I miss my Dad no matter how much time has passed. He left very big shoes to fill." "He was a unique individual by every measure, in everything he put his hand to." "We dug a lot of ditches, we built his boat together. He was a very affectionate but demanding taskmaster. We (with brother David and sister Virginia) knew he was on our side, but he would not allow us to do less than he knew we could."

Fluke was a self-confessed “inveterate tinkerer”. He designed the family home in northwest Seattle, overlooking Puget Sound, handled the contracting himself, and harnessing the power of a creek with a “mini-hydroelectric dam” to generate 10 kilowatts of power.

Among the properties owned by the Fluke family is Vendovi Island, north of Anacortes, Washington in Puget Sound. The family has owned the island since 1967.