Glen P. Robinson

Robinson was born on September 10, 1923, in Crescent City, Florida, an outskirt of Jacksonville, to Glen Parmelee and Laura Mae (Lewis) Robinson.^[3][7][8] His family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, in 1937. After attending high school at Marion Military Institute in Alabama, Robinson opened a small machine shop in Valdosta. He sold industrial products and metal tools to local industry.^[3] In 1942, with the encouragement of his father, Robinson enrolled as a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology to study chemical engineering. However, his education was interrupted by his enlistment into the Naval Signal Corps and service in the Pacific Theatre of World War II where he installed telephones on recaptured American possessions during the war.^[3][9]

Robinson returned from the conflict as a junior and in 1948 he changed his major to physics, as the School of Physics started its degree program that year.^[9] He received a Bachelor of Science in Physics in 1948, and a Master of Science in Physics (also from Georgia Tech) in 1950.^[4][9][10] Robinson was also a member of Georgia Tech's prestigious secret society, ANAK.^[11][12] Robinson had been a ham radio operator enthusiast since the age of 14, and started a radio repair service to provide additional income while he was a student at Georgia Tech.^[9]

One of Robinson's professors, James E. Boyd, convinced him to give up the radio repair business and work as a research assistant at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (then known as the Engineering Experiment Station, or EES).^[9] One of his ham radio friends was actually his boss's boss and EES director, Gerald Rosselot.^[9] Working after hours at EES, Robinson built a television set in the lab, which he and others claim was the first to be built in the state of Georgia.^[3][9][13] In 1950, Robinson went to Tennessee to work in nuclear engineering for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, servicing radiology-related equipment at local hospitals.^[3][14][15]

Robinson and six other Georgia Tech researchers (including Robinson's former professor James E. Boyd and EES director Gerald Rosselot) each contributed $100 (for a total of $700) and founded Scientific Associates on October 31, 1951, with the initial goal of marketing antenna structures being developed by the radar branch of the EES to the U.S. military.^[9][16][17] Robinson worked as the unpaid general manager for the first year.^[14] The relations between Scientific Associates and the EES were initially strained due to an unrelated dispute over station finances between EES director Gerald Rosselot and Georgia Tech vice president Cherry Emerson. Specifically, Emerson believed that surplus funds realized through research contracts should be returned to Georgia Tech, while the Georgia Tech Research Corporation and Rosselot felt they should be retained to foster additional research.^[9][18]

A strict conflict of interest policy was enacted, and researchers were forced to choose between the two entities; the initial investors had all kept their faculty jobs, and most returned to them.^[18] After the fledgling company's first contract resulted in a $4,000 loss, Robinson bought out all but one of the original investors and paid them each back their original $100.^[16] Robinson left EES and became president and CEO of the new company, which was renamed Scientific Atlanta.^[3] Boyd stayed on as a member of the board of directors; Robinson's friend Larry Clayton, previously involved in Robinson's radio business and now having graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in physics, became the head of the new company's research and development.^[9] Years later, the school would promote Scientific Atlanta's origins at Georgia Tech, and Scientific Atlanta has been a longtime financial contributor to Georgia Tech.^[18]

Scientific Atlanta's first business focus was antennas for military and industrial use. Finances were tight at the fledgling firm. Signal Corps order in 1954 to develop a new plastic lens antenna prompted a need for a recorder to test the patterns of the more sophisticated antenna, but the cheapest recorder cost $10,000.^[16] When they could not afford an automatic antenna pattern recorder, of which there was only one such machine on the market, Robinson decided to build his own.^[19] When word in the industry spread companies began contacting Scientific Atlanta. Within six months of the development of the device, Robinson sold units to Western Electric, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, General Electric, Convair, American Machine and Foundry, and many other large corporations of the era. The success attracted venture capital from Rockefeller Bros., Inc., put up at Laurance Rockefeller's recommendation.^[16] Within eight years of operating, the firm had captured 60% of the global market share of electronic instruments for testing and designing antennas, had broken ground on a 25-acre facility in Northeast Atlanta, and had 240 employees on the payroll including 40 engineers.

Scientific Atlanta helped NASA establish ground stations for communication with astronauts during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects.^[3] When John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 on Mercury-Atlas 6, his voice was transmitted and received by radio antennas designed and equipment built by Scientific Atlanta.^[14] In the 1970s, Robinson recognized the potential combination of communications satellites and cable television. Ted Turner purchased one of Scientific Atlanta's first satellite systems, which formed the basis of Turner's "Super Station" that was broadcast around the country to other cable providers.^[3] In 1975, HBO and TelePrompTer used Scientific Atlanta equipment to transmit the first live satellite-delivered cable event, the "Thrilla in Manila" heavyweight boxing championship bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.^[3] Scientific Atlanta is perhaps best known for pioneering television cable set-top boxes and equipment worldwide and the development of satellite Earth stations.

Robinson remained CEO of Scientific Atlanta for 20 years, and chairman of the board for an additional eight years, until he retired from the company in 1979.^{[4][10][13][20]} Scientific Atlanta grew dramatically; it earned $3.1 million in revenue in 1962, approximately $200 million in 1979, and $1.9 billion in yearly revenue by 2005.^[13][16] Scientific Atlanta served as a regional business incubator, with hundreds of companies tracing their roots back to it.^[3]