EBEAM - Key Persons

Bernard Vancil has 30 years' experience designing and building all kinds of vacuum electron devices, including traveling wave tubes, cathode ray tubes, and klystrons. He did graduate work at UCLA in Plasma Physics, then joined the technical staff at the Electron Dynamics Division of Hughes Aircraft Company in 1975. His primary job there was to design, construct and test High Power Coupled Cavity Traveling Wave Tubes. He came to Oregon in 1977 and was employed as a Process Engineer at Tektronix in the CRT division. He then moved to the Tektronix Research Labs, where he developed high frequency real-time cathode ray tubes. During this period he developed expertise in cathode technology. In the mid-80's he established a successful consulting practice in the area of cathodes and electron tubes under the name FDE Associates. He developed a state-of-the-art traveling wave tube for Hughes and an advanced measurement CRT for Tektronix. He worked at various times for EGG, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, McDonnell Douglas, Varian, Boeing, and other companies, as well as the military and NASA. He has written several articles and presented work at technical conferences. In the 1990's, Tektronix was phasing out of the CRT business, and he acquired its substantial inventory of materials and equipment at low cost. He formed a partnership with several engineers and technicians from the disbanded Tektronix CRT operation. The resulting company began building electron tubes and cathodes, and doing research and development projects in that area. It won 9 Small Business Innovation and Research grants from NASA alone. He was the Principal Investigator on these. In 2002, he became President of e-beam, inc., which provides broad-based consulting and design services to the electron tube industry. He provides technical oversight on all projects. Education: B.A. in Physics, University of California, Berkeley; M.S. in Physics, UCLA.