Teledyne LeCroy Brand Guidelines: From a Particle-Physics Lab to Oscilloscopes

A physics lab in a former laundromat.

Teledyne LeCroy began in 1964 as LeCroy Research Systems, founded by Walter LeCroy. He had earned a physics degree at Columbia University in 1956 and become chief electronics engineer in the university’s physics department, Electronic Design reported in a 2007 profile. The International Directory of Company Histories says he set up the business in a former laundromat in Irvington, New York.

Its first market was narrow. The company made electronic modules that captured and analysed the signatures of subatomic particles for nuclear and particle-physics laboratories, both sources say. It moved to Elmsford in 1965 and West Nyack two years later, according to the International Directory, and in 1972 opened a design and production site in Geneva, Switzerland, near one of its most important customers, the CERN laboratory. In 1976 it moved its headquarters to Chestnut Ridge, New York, where the company still has its head office.

By the early 1980s the physics market was shrinking, the International Directory says, and the company renamed itself LeCroy Corporation and turned to general-purpose instruments, settling on oscilloscopes. By 1983, the same source says, it had begun applying its high-energy physics technology to the new line and carrying out market research among its future customers. Walter LeCroy told Electronic Design that part of the answer came from a toy shop: the Vectrex, a 1980s video-game console with a built-in screen, showed him a display technique he adapted for his instruments.

Digital oscilloscopes and protocol analysers.

LeCroy introduced its first digital oscilloscope in 1985, the International Directory says, applying what it had learned in high-energy physics to the wider test and measurement market. Walter LeCroy described the result to Electronic Design as “the first digital oscilloscope that operated like a digital oscilloscope,” his own claim; Electronic Design noted that the company was then smaller than rivals such as Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard.

In the 1990s the company dropped older models and turned towards testing computer networks and equipment, Electronic Design reported. It went public on Nasdaq in November 1995, the International Directory says, and bought Lightspeed Electronics in 2000; Lutz P. Hickels had become president and chief executive in 1993. By 2007 Walter LeCroy had stepped back from design and management and held the title of honorary chairman, Electronic Design reported, saying he hoped the company would be known for “serious contributions to measurement technology.” In September 2004, English Wikipedia says, it bought Computer Access Technology Corporation (CATC), which brought protocol analysers into the range.

Those two strands still define the brand. The company describes itself today as a provider of oscilloscopes and protocol analysers: the first measure and analyse electronic signals, and the second generate and monitor traffic on high-speed data links such as PCI Express, USB, DDR memory and SAS, it says. Its oscilloscope families include WaveSurfer, WaveRunner, WavePro HD and WaveMaster, alongside high-definition HDO models, and its protocol tools include the Summit range for PCI Express.

The company talks about its instruments in terms of analysis rather than display alone. At the time of the Teledyne deal it described its heritage in what it called “WaveShape Analysis”: capturing, viewing and measuring high-speed signals. Its website says its oscilloscopes pair large displays with analysis tools tailored to fields such as serial data test and automotive bus analysis.

Design and documentation.

Test and measurement companies sell instruments that most people never see, and their marketing is built around the screen. Product pages and brochures tend to lead with an oscilloscope display: a dark background, a fine grid of divisions and bright traces in yellow, cyan, magenta and green, each colour standing for a separate channel. The trace is the product’s face, so photographs are often cropped tight on the display rather than on the case around it.

The second familiar image is the laboratory. Signal and spectrum analysers, generators and power supplies appear stacked in racks or lined up on a bench, cables looping between front panels of knobs, soft keys and connectors. Engineers are shown probing a circuit board with a fine tip, reading a waveform while the device under test sits under a lamp or a magnifier. The tone is calm and technical, with product names and model numbers set in plain sans type.

Further along the chain, the pictures move into the factory. Semiconductor test makers show automated chip testers and handlers in clean production areas, staff in protective suits, and wafer probe cards photographed under magnification, where rows of needle-like contacts meet the pads of a chip. Network and wireless test companies favour antennas, fibre spools, base stations and phones in shielded boxes.

The category also meets its customers in person. Trade shows such as electronica in Munich, DesignCon in Santa Clara and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona are where new instruments are launched and demonstrated live, so stand design, demo screens and printed data sheets carry much of each brand’s visual identity. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it and where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A New York instrument maker inside a larger group.

LeCroy stayed independent until 2012. On 28 May 2012 it signed a merger agreement with Teledyne Technologies of Thousand Oaks, California, and the two companies announced the deal the next day, English Wikipedia says. LeCroy’s stockholders approved it on 2 August, and the acquisition took effect on 3 August 2012, the two companies said in a joint announcement on 6 August. The business joined Teledyne’s Instrumentation segment and has since operated as Teledyne LeCroy, Inc., with about 500 employees worldwide at the time of the deal. Teledyne described itself then as a supplier of instrumentation, digital imaging products and software, aerospace and defence electronics, and engineered systems, with operations mainly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Mexico.

Under Teledyne the company kept buying in its own field. In April 2016 it announced the purchase of Frontline Test Equipment, a maker of wireless protocol analysis tools, and an agreement to buy Quantum Data, which makes video test tools, signal generators and protocol analysers, English Wikipedia says.

Today the company’s website says it is headquartered in Chestnut Ridge, New York, with sales, service and development subsidiaries in the United States, Europe and Asia, and that its products are used in semiconductors, computers, consumer electronics, aerospace and defence, automotive and industrial work, and telecommunications.

For a design guide, Teledyne LeCroy shows how a founder’s name and a laboratory origin can carry a brand through a change of market and a change of owner. Compare Tektronix, another American oscilloscope maker, and Keysight, which traces its line to Hewlett-Packard. For this guide we use a deep blue, a navy and a warm amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Teledyne LeCroy’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.