Sorting Good Electronics from Bad
Teradyne Inc.


In the late 1940s Alex d'Arbeloff and Nick DeWolf were classmates at MIT who met when they lined up alphabetically in ROTC class. After pursuing separate careers, they decided to start their own company in 1960, first located above Joe and Nemo's hot dog stand on the corner of Kingston and Summer Streets near Downtown Crossing.

Their idea was to automate the sorting of good electronic devices from bad ones. For the first time, the makers of semiconductors and electronic products could achieve the low-cost mass production that could be used in any end product from cars to calculators, watches to satellites.

"The company was named Teradyne because it had to have a 'd' in it. 'Tera' is the prefix for 10 to the 12th power, and 'dyne' is a unit of force. To us, the name means rolling a 15,000-ton boulder uphill."
-Nick DeWolf