interview with Glenn P. Robinson, Jr., class of 1948, conducted by Marilyn Summers on August the 31st, 1995, and Mr. Robinson's home in Atlanta, Georgia. The subject of the interview is student life at Georgia Tech. Mr. Robinson, thank you so much for having us here today. We're delighted to be in your lovely space. 

Well, thank you for coming, Marilyn. This is quite a treat for me, my honor. I appreciate it. We'd like to hear the Glenn Robinson story. Will you begin at the beginning? 

Well, it's a long story. I was born in 1923 in Jacksonville, Florida. I grew up in a very small town south of Jacksonville until I was 14, then moved to Valley Austin. 

But my wonderful memories of my first 14 years in Crescent City, Florida, really set the course for my future. One of my neighbors was a high school science teacher. 

He was also a retired Navy communications officer and amateur radio operator and I just fell in love with amateur radio back then and science so on because of him. I got my radio amateur license at age 14 and I talked to almost every country throughout the world. 

And what was interesting back then is you built your own equipment, receivers and transmitters and antennas and so on, because you couldn't buy those things then. 

So that's what started me in electronics. My father was in the naval stores, the turpentine business. And when we moved to Valdosta, he wanted me to study chemistry. And I was mildly interested in chemistry, but really more interested in electronics. 

But also, I really wanted to go to the Naval Academy, Annapolis. One of my favorite books back then were Captain Horatio Hornblower series. And we lived on the water between two lakes in Florida, and I just loved the water. 

So I did get an appointment to Annapolis, and I actually mustered in there just about the time World War II broke out. 

But I knew I had a stigmatism, and they knew, and they said, well, I'm sort of a marginal case. 

But anyway, they did let me stay there about a week until they called me back for another eye exam and said no. And I was really, really disappointed. 

But my second choice was Georgia Tech. It should have been my first choice, but anyway, I was very happy to come back to Georgia Tech. Had you ever been there before? 

Not only for the visit. I had not gone to school there, of course, none. 

But you had visited the campus? 

I had visited, yes, and I had several friends that had gone there. I remember in my younger days, my dad used to ship a lot of things by the railroad and freight lines. 

I used to ride the engine as they switched boxcars around, and someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, I want to be an engineer. They said, you don't want to drive one of these dirty old things. I said, you don't understand. I want to be an engineer at Georgia Tech. 

But anyway, honoring my dad's wishes, I started off as a major in chemistry, chemical engineering. 

And I think I purposely, I didn't flunk the course, the first chemistry course, but I did not do well in it, but I made A's in electrical engineering and physics. 

So I think that convinced him to let me switch over to electrical engineering and later on to physics. 

So I did go to Georgia Tech one year before World War, I mean, when World War II started. 

What was that year like? before the war started? 

Well, we all knew where we were going to go in the military. 

Oh, you knew already? 

And a lot of us, they had the Naval Reserve, Naval ROTC there, very active, and ROTC. 

And we were told by Fred Ajax that if we joined the Enlisted Reserve Corps, we could stay in until we graduated, and then go into the military with the commission. 

Well, a lot of us signed up, and within six months, we said, no, well, we need you now. 

So we were called into service, and I was very fortunate to be able to join the Signal Corps. 

So I went into basic training out in Missouri, and then went to Fort Monmouth, and I was getting ready to go to England. 

I was a communications technician then, and they sent me home for my last leave before I went to England before the invasion, and I got a telegram saying, report back to Fort Monmouth. I had been selected for Officer Candidate School, and that was a great experience. 

I learned radio, teletype, communications, telephone communications, and then got a commission and got a ship to Hawaii, and that was paradise. It really is then, huh? 

It really was, and I wanted to retire there, but my job... And you were how old, 19? 

I was 19. And you wanted to retire? 

No, I wanted to get a job there and live there the rest of my life. 

But I worked out of Hawaii. My job was to go to the different islands as we captured them and put in telephone systems. And also set up radio communications back to the United States. 

So I'd go off for one or two weeks to put in a telephone system and come back to Hawaii. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. 

I lived there about two years, and I got a commercial radio license and got a job with a local radio station who was trying to get into television. Television, of course, had not started then. And I was just about ready to tell my parents that I was staying. 

But then I said, well, I've got to go back and finish the Georgia Tech. 

So I came back to Tech in 1946, I guess, and I met my bride, who's really an Atlanta girl with roots in South Georgia, and knows all my family, and I didn't know her. 

So when I came back to Georgia Tech, I switched over to physics and had some wonderful professors. there, one in particular that was really one of the original founders of Scientific Atlanta, Dr. Jim Boyd. 

He was a physics professor and also a researcher at the Engineering Experiment Station, which is now the Georgia Tech Research Institute. 

And while I was a student, he asked me if I'd be willing to work part-time in the radar branch, and I couldn't turn it down. 

So I got my physics degree, and I stayed on and worked on a master's degree and worked at the research station. Let's go back to the beginning. You were in school for how many quarters before you got... 

Well, actually, before I went to Annapolis, I went to a military prep school, Merriam Military Institute. And once you got to Georgia Tech, how long did they let you go to school before you got? 

One year. Oh, so you did get your first year in? 

I finished the first year. They didn't get me finished the first year. What was it like to be on the campus at that time? 

Well, it was great. Of course, we were all serious there, because we knew. It was uniforms. Everybody in uniforms? 

Well, no. A lot of the Navy people were being sent there by the Navy. There were a lot of truly Navy people there. We, I guess most everybody, all the students were in ROTC, and we were serious. I mean, we knew that... Our work, our work all the time. It wasn't, it was a lot of work, but still... Any social life at all? 

Yeah, I joined a fraternity. We used to call it We the People, SAE. 

I remember coming up from Valdosta by train back then, and this is sort of a joke, but this is what we used to tell ourselves, the, what do you call, the hawker that walks up and down the aisles and sells peanuts, popcorns, ******* jacks, and SAE fraternity pets. They were easy to come by. Yeah, it was a popular fraternity then. 

But I think that really made you fit in, Georgia Tech. 

So you had your social life primarily through the fraternity. Do you remember going to football games or basketball? 

Oh, yeah. We were supposed to be great football games. One of my very close friends there was a football star, Clint Castleberry. He was one of the first ones killed in the war. That was very sad. We hear he was a great athlete. He was a great athlete. I don't know that we've ever talked to anyone who actually knew him. 

He and I were in the ROTC together, and I used to march right behind him or in front of him or something, and it was real sad. 

But some of the professors there were just outstanding, I thought. The math professor loved, I think he's a legend, D. M. 

Smith, he used to ride his old model a multi forward around and he was a wonderful teacher we had the chemistry teacher was real tough what I didn't do too well on was we call him **** Daniels he's a real good teacher you didn't do well but not because he wasn't a good teacher just because I wasn't that interested in it and I was more interested in electronics and physics did you have any opportunity to use your radio skills at all? 

Oh, yes. I had a ham radio set at Georgia Tech in my car. You had a car? 

Well, no, that was after the war. I'm sorry, but I had a car after the war. I had a radio set in my car then, a mobile ham radio set. 

But when I went to Marion Military Institute, I had a little radio transmitter receiver I had built, and had my amateur license transferred over there. And I used to use it to talk back to Valdosta, a lot of friends. 

But then when the war broke out on December 7th, they closed down all the amateur radio stations, wouldn't let us use it anymore. Do you remember where you were when you heard about the war? 

Yes, it was Sunday morning. 

I was, I think we just got back from, well, Sunday you get to sleep in a little bit, and we didn't have calisthenics that morning. 

So I was actually listening to the radio when Roosevelt came on, and that was really a shocker. 

Did you have any idea what an impact it was going to have on your life? 

No, but I certainly did not know it was going to come from that way, but I had been keeping up with the war. I remember the air strikes and invasion of Poland. They just really upset me and I just followed the polls so closely. 

What were some of the campus traditional things at the time? 

Did you do the varsity and the things that we think of? 

A lot of people don't like the varsity. I love the varsity. 

So was that part of your lifestyle? 

Oh, yeah. 

But being in the fraternity, though, because we had fraternity meals. Is that where you ate your meals? 

Primarily. 

But then, Britton Hall on the weekends, we had to eat Britton Hall because we didn't serve meals at fraternity then. And then you went away. 

When you came back, was there a difference in the campus when you came back? 

Well, all the students were much more mature, of course. I mean, the majority of them were veterans now. very serious. 

I was able to live in the fraternity house then but the year before the war I could not get a dormitory room. 

I had to be on a waiting list but I stayed at a boarding house on 5th street with a deaf and dumb elderly couple. 

But my sister and I in the early days learned sign language and we used to communicate with each other and it made my parents so mad because they couldn't understand what we were saying and but anyway I could communicate with these deaf and dumb people on Fifth Street and that was a lot of fun. Very interesting that you had that skill. 

So you came back to a mature campus. Very much so. Serious people. Was there still social times? 

Still good times? 

Oh yes. I don't know how we did so much in a day. We'd have maybe five minutes between classes and we'd sit down and play a rubber bridge real fast. We could play bridge so fast you couldn't believe it. 

But when I first came back, still being interested in electronics, I bought a little, started a little radio repair shop and had several students working for me repairing radios. You had students working for you. 

So who was your public? 

You were dealing with the general public? 

Well, back then there was a famous name, expensive radio called Scott, and I was the authorized service dealer or representative for Scott Radio. You had a real business going there. Where'd you operate from? 

Peachtree Hills. Oh, you had a shop? 

I had a shop, yeah. This was before television. And you did this and went to school, too? 

Yeah. 

Well, I had several students, but it worked. 

So you were an employer, already an employer. And so was it lucrative? 

It helped you get through school? 

It helped. Of course, I was on the GI Bill, but that end of the GI Bill let me go through school on my own. 

But after I graduated in 48, I believe, I stayed on and worked at the Experiment Station. What was that like? 

Was that the beginnings of the Experiment Station? 

That was the early days. We only had sales of a million or two dollars. Most of the work was Navy antenna design type work. It was extremely interesting and exciting. 

But during that time, I built the first TV here in Georgia, I believe. You built it? 

Yeah, from scratch. Where did you know about that? 

Well, there were a lot of books out by then. I used an oscilloscope. It already started with a tube, you know, oscilloscope tube and a lot of electronics. And all I had to do was build the RF circuits. 

Did it work? 

Yeah, I had it in the fraternity house, and it was a, of course, this was maybe a year before WSB came on with TV. And nobody ever knew whether it worked or not. 

Of course, we knew it would work because you had signal generators so we could set up test procedures. 

But when the WSB first came on, there must have been 40 fraternity brothers sitting out waiting for it to come on, and I was just sweating to see whether it would work or not. And sure enough, it worked. 

But back then, the screen was only so big, and used a magnifying glass in front of it to make the screen look bigger. Oh, really? 

That was really the early days of TV. And there you all were to see this magic happening. Yeah, it worked. How fun. 

And what happened then? 

A charming bride and we got married just after I finished, got my bachelor's degree and we lived in the apartments on 10th Street for two years. Right. 

And at the research station, several of us talked about forming a company to actually produce some of the products that might be developed at Georgia Tech. 

Well, nobody wanted to do anything about it, but I, majoring in physics, had gotten interested in nuclear physics, and I wanted to get some experience in nuclear physics, so I left Georgia Tech and went up to Oak Ridge. I worked there for a little over two years in the research lab at what they call X10 back then. Before that happened, do you remember your graduation? 

Yes. It was at the parks, but it was hot. Did your folks come? 

Yeah. Did your dad forgive you for not going to chemistry? 

Oh, yeah. I mean, he was very happy. It was okay as long as you got through. Yeah. 

So, did Mrs. Robinson move up to Oak Ridge with you then when you made the move? 

By all means. And set up shop up there. Yeah. And you learned a lot? 

Well, I did several things. Again, a lot of fun. One of my dad's close friends in Valdosta owned a Dairy Queen store. One of the first Dairy Queens. 

And Dairy Queen, the franchise owner for the whole southeast lived in Tennessee, and my dad put word in this fellow's mouth that maybe I ought to be talked into opening a Dairy Queen store at Oak Ridge while I was going to school and while I was working at Oak Ridge and having children. And sure enough, I did. 

You've never been one to sit around idly, huh? 

And that was the most popular store up there, especially in the summer. You'd have maybe 200 people lined up outside to get an ice cream cone, a milkshake or something. 

And my job, after going to the nice school, University of Tennessee, I'd go back and close up the dairy cream store. And my job was to clean the machines out and pick up the money. and being rather thrifty, I didn't want to see any of that ice cream wasted. 

So I made a milkshake or an ice cream cone and within a couple of months I weighed 220 pounds. 

But then this Dr. 

Boyd I mentioned earlier, a physics professor and by then he was the associate director of the Experiment Station Tech, came up to Oak Ridge and said, look, we are serious now about forming a company. He wanted me to come back and be the general manager. And I said, I'm ready. I've always been wanting to do that. He said, it'll cost me $100. No salary. Only what I can make. 

But he gave me a part-time job at the Experiment Station. 

So what happened to the Dairy Queen? 

I sold it and came back to Atlanta and I was the first employee of a company then called Scientific Associates. 

But I worked part time at the experiment station at Georgia Tech. 

And we had initially a small contract with Yale University to build an antenna for them on the design that was made at Georgia Tech. 

And that was very successful, and we got a little contract with the Navy to build another similar type of antenna, and from there the company began to grow. 

Well, we've never had a bad year, but we're very modest and meager. 

I remember having to wait for the postman to come to see if he brought us a check so we could wait to bail. 

So you know what it is. Yeah, you know what it is to go from hand to mouth. Right. And that was in what year? 1952. 

So you were not very long out of school, and you were already starting a company. Yeah. I think it was 20, 26 when we started the company, that's about right now. And so what happened? 

Well, I... It started to grow? 

Pardon? 

It started to grow? 

It started to grow. 

And we, the original investors wanted to work part -time, but I could not, depending on part-time people, when you started really having orders and depending on their schedules. 

So they got a little bit dissatisfied and they sold out. only one investor of the regional group stayed with us, Dr. Boyd. Dr. Boyd is, I really consider the founder of Santa Fe Atlanta. 

He was acting president of Georgia Tech for a couple of months, and then went over to serve as president of West Georgia College, and came back as vice chancellor of the Board of Regents until he retired. 

Now, you said Scientific Associates, and then you said Scientific Atlanta. What happened? 

Well, Scientific Associates was our first name. There was a company in St. Louis with the same name we found out after a year or two. 

And they started to bring suit against us, and we decided, well, we might as well change early in our life rather than fight this battle. 

So we already had stationary with SA and all that on it, so we fished around for a name that he could use SA. And I think we're glad that we chose that name. It gave us an identity. People could not remember our name. We said, oh, that Atlanta company. We're the only electronics company in Atlanta, so that gave us a real good identity. And how many years did you stay with Scientific Atlanta? 

Oh, it was I think 27 years. I'm a shirt-pleased, do-it -yourself type of person. I like to develop products. I like to work in the lab. 

Did you have the opportunity to do that there? 

Well, I did, but less and less as we grew, because more and more of my time was spent talking to employees and to investment bankers and stockholders, and I just really got fed up with that, and I brought in a president to replace me and started working more in the lab and came up with some new products that did not fit Signs of the Atlanta. 

So I chose to take early retirement and start a new company. And what was the name of that company? 

It was called ETAC at the time. 

We had developed a water heating heat pump and some, you might It's a state-of-the-art heat pump type heating and cooling equipment and did not fit Santa Carolina at all. 

So I started that company and about four or five years ago we merged with a company in Cordill called Marvair. It was a company that was founded some 30 or 40 years ago by Munchy Gear Works up in Indiana. They lost interest in it. Actually, the manager of the plant and Cordial had a heart attack and died. They sort of lost interest in the company. Some of the employees there bought Marvair. They came to us and said, look, we need some engineering talent. We can't really attract them here in Cordill, less mortgage, and we did this work out extremely well. 

We changed the name to Chris Bear, and we used a trade name, Marvare and E-Tech, for our products right now. We have about 190 employees now in this country during the... 

Is it here in Atlanta? 

No, manufacturing's in Cordill, and engineering and sales is here in Atlanta. all our product development sales. We have about 20 engineers and technicians here in Atlanta and 160 and production people in Cordia. 

But we're in sort of a high-tech heating and air conditioning business. 

We're the largest supplier of, we call it sophisticated cooling equipment, conditioning equipment for the telecommunications industry. 

We're the largest supplier of cooling equipment for cellular telephone shelters for the new wireless communications that's coming in. And it's extremely reliable, redundant, has a fault reporting back to the central office. It's really a booming business. 

And school systems are also a large part of our business, we developed a unique proprietary, what we call fresh air ventilator. 

We call it the green wheel because it exhausts stale air from a classroom, takes either the heat or the cooling out of that air, and as it brings in either hot or cold air from the outside, it transfers that heat to the fresh air stream. That's about 85% efficient. Any Any new school classroom now is required to have fresh air ventilation. 

Do you remember the classrooms you had in the admin building? 

Oh, no air conditioning, I've never heard of them. Did you even have any air? 

Well, we had fans, there were window fans. Could have used your system then, huh? 

Sure could have. It would have been very revolutionary then. 

Did you ever think, back when you were sitting in those classrooms, that you were going to develop what you did? 

No, I knew I was going to be in electronics and so on, but I didn't know how much fun it was going to be then. I have started a new company too. Another fellow and I have started a company called Laser Craft. It's actually a spin-off from an existing company called Laser Atlanta. 

But we have a contract now to build laser speed guns for the Highway Patrol. It's much more accurate and harder to beat than radar. When you get zapped by a laser beam, it's too late. You got your ticket. And it's very hard to defend against it. 

So that's a real exciting area of laser technology. 

This is ********* to talk about it yet, but we are developing another product that I'm really excited about today. I have a patent application in on there. It's called a laser cane for the blind. It's like a flashlight, except it shoots out a laser beam. It measures the distance to any object as you scan it around. And you wear an earphone, and it changes it to a different frequency for different distances. 

So you can be walking along and you can see a curb, hear the frequency change as you run into a curb on the sidewalk or a street or come to the stairs, you hear beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, as you go up and down the stairs. 

So it really does communicate with you. It does communicate. We're really excited about that. We do have a prototype. Wonderful. On that. 

So that's a new hobby, you might say, I have. I'm really excited about it. 

But I want to talk a little bit about my family because I think that's part of my biggest pride and joy. 

If I ask you what your major accomplishment is, that's what you'd say? 

Growing a real fine, wonderful family. I mean, it's so important to me. And how many Robinsons are there? 

We have five children, four boys and a girl. I have eleven grandchildren. 

Two of the boys graduated from Georgia Tech, one from Southern Tech, one had a scholarship at the University of North Carolina, and a daughter graduated from Georgia State University. 

So they're all local kids, and I have so many friends have sent their children off to Yankee schools or California and never come back. They get married or something and really never come back. We have all of our five children and 11 grandchildren within walking distance of here. You might say that's too close, but it's not. We really enjoy it. 

If you had to go back and do it all over again when you look at it would you do the same thing? 

I very definitely would. I'm trying to think of what I would do differently. 

Would it still be Georgia Tech? 

I would have skipped even thinking about going to Annapolis and going straight to Georgia Tech. I would have, I could have spent six more months while I was at Oak Ridge. I I went to my school, University of Tennessee, working on my Ph. D., finished all the coursework and was ready for my dissertation, and I came back to Georgia Tech to start Santa Fe, Atlanta with the idea that I'd work on that, but I got so busy with Santa Fe, Atlanta, I never got back around to it, and I just wish I had. Did Georgia Tech prepare you for all the challenges? 

Very definitely. I really couldn't think of a better school. I did go to some night courses at Georgia State University, accounting and business law and so on. 

But I think Georgia Tech offers all of that now as extracurricular type courses, which is certainly helpful. Mr. Robinson, in the course of your lifetime and your career, you've gotten a lot of honors and things. Tell us a little bit about some of the opportunities that came to you through your work. 

Well, I had several recognitions, I guess. 

At age 29, I was made a member of the Young Presidents Organization, which I was very flattered to join. And that was very helpful. 

You got to meet with all the presidents of small counties all around the country and presidents of universities and so on. Very, very helpful. I was named Small Businessman of the Year for Georgia one year. I was named entrepreneur of the year, one year. I served on a number of committees and boards. 

Of course, I'm one of the longest members of the Georgia Tech, a trustee of the Georgia Tech Foundation now. I'm emeritus now, but I've been on the Georgia Tech Foundation board for more than 30 years, I guess. 

And also a chairman and member of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation board until about two years ago, and my age said I had to retire. I'm emeritus now. 

Well, that was a tremendous experience. 

I was made a fellow of the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and electronic engineers, which I'm real pleased and flattered to be. And I think that's enough. Maybe a few other little ones brought down. You've been very supportive of Georgia Tech. You give back. I have a reason to be because that's done so much for me. It's part of your philosophy to give back to the community. 

Can you think of any other Georgia Tech memories you might want to share with us? 

It was a good time. It was a good time. You learned a lot. I really did. I think fraternity life is very broadening. I was active in some of the educational type fraternities. I forget some of the names right now, the Physics Society and IEEE and so on. And I think the fellowship of a fraternity life is very, very helpful. And has it helped you even into your business life? 

A lot of friends. 

And that's one thing I like about really sending your children to local schools even though they want to get away from home. You develop a lot of friends at Georgia Tech. A network that supports you. I had a sort of ulterior motive with my children. I did not try to influence where they went to school. I gave them some stock inside of Atlanta. I said, this is for your education. And you'd spend it, go to school wherever you want to. If they needed a little more, I can help you out. Anything you have left over, you can keep, buy a car, put a down paper on your house, and so on. 

Without telling them or suggesting where they go to school, they found out that Georgia Tech and Georgia State and Southern Tech tuition costs are so much lower than anywhere else. They all voluntarily chose to go there. They all wound up with a little extra change, and everybody won on that one. Like their daddy, they were frugal. 

They knew how to save money, but did they gain 40 pounds like you did? 

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Robinson, for sharing your story with us. Thank you, Marilyn. I'd be happy to see this tape. We'll enjoy sharing it with you. I'm not very photogenic.