History of Anchor-Electronics

To understand Anchor-Electronics' commitment to providing the Bay Area's prototyping engineers with a convenient, organized and reliable source for parts and expertise, one must first examine the life of its founder, John Robert Burgoon.

Naval aviation engineer, certified gemologist, avid chess player, and successful business owner. These were but a few of the many sides to John.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, John was an only child who exhibited a willingness to work hard at an early age. As a 9-year-old, he took enormous pride in earning 25 cents an hour while serving as Santa’s helper at a department store. His work ethic, coupled with an innate business sense, led to John’s high school classmates electing him class president. They also voted him “Most Likely to Succeed” and “Most Popular Boy”. He placed second in voting for “Handsomest Boy”, “Most Scholarly Boy” and “Wittiest Boy”.

John joined the Navy when he was seventeen. His impressive scores on the Navy’s entrance exams landed him in the United States' first radar school. It wasn’t long before John, himself, was teaching electronics/radio in the Navy.

After 20 years in the Navy, John went to work for RCA and from there he was recruited to Lockheed. At Lockheed he had technical articles published (dealing with EMI) and earned their “Employee of the Month” award in August 1967. But after nine years behind a desk, John found himself longing for new challenges.

John began taking interest in the ads in local paper regarding surplus electronics and soon discovered the San Jose Flea Market to be another source of odd lots of electronic parts. It didn't take long before there were people interested in buying the stuff John had collected, and he was then compelled to make a choice between holding a steady job, or leaping into the unknown.

In the early '70s John resigned from his position at Lockheed and moved his fledgling electronic parts company from his garage to a nearby warehouse. At about this time home computers were just coming on the scene and John recognized an opportunity. With technical help from others, John started another company to build computer boards. The parts company he called, “Anchor Electronics” and the board company was “Solid State Music”, or “SSM”.

In rapid succession SSM’s line of “Blue Boards” included a motherboard, memory board, CPU board, and I/O board for computers using the S-100 bus. These met with tremendous success and were shipped all over the world. John sold his Blue Boards to the local Homebrew Club – even a start-up company called Apple Computer wanted them.

After John was approached with an idea for an integrated circuit design, he started a third company, Solid State Microtechnology for Music, or SSMM. In time his line of audio ICs could be found inside almost all music synthesizers.

John’s companies occupied several buildings and he had about 35 employees. The stress of it all proved too much and in late 1977 John suffered a massive heart attack. He ended up selling all his businesses, except for the parts company that was so dear to him – Anchor Electronics.