Where it all began…the home factory.
Our founder, Peter, knew from a young age that he wanted to be an electrical engineer. After leaving school he gained an apprenticeship at AG Healings where he could hone his trade on their broad manufacturing line. He worked there for six years, leaving to take up other various positions at Monash University and Commonwealth Radium Laboratories, all while studying part-time at RMIT. After completing his degree in electrical engineering, Peter began work at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and it was here that his dream to create, innovate and design was ignited.
On the 9th February 1968, Scientific Electronics Pty Ltd was incorporated. The business plan was to manufacture a range of power supplies, frequency counters and digital multimeters. Peter’s CSIRO work colleague, Bill Whitbourn, and his wife, Heather, were equal shareholders. The garage of Peter and Jill’s home was turned into the business factory, where they started out printing circuit boards (PCBs), working nights and weekends. The exhaustion felt over working full days at one job, only to return home to keep working was quelled by the spark of Peter’s design ideas.
It was the drive to succeed, the ambition to build and manufacture that brought Peter and Jill’s dream to a reality
Early units in front of the Garage
