About a year ago I spoke with Maximillian Berktold, the vice president for Lasico (Los Angeles Scientific Company), about his company and the digitizers it made. He told me the company had pretty much closed down and didn’t have any digitizers in stock anymore.
Berktold went on to tell me some interesting tidbits about the nearly 80 years the company had been in business.
Recently, I was curious about it’s current status so I called, and lo and behold someone answered. The gentleman told me that there were a few L-10s left for sale but that I’d have to call back in the morning to find out the price. According to the company’s website, which is still up and running, the Mod. L10 is a mechanical polar planimeter.
For those interested in some of the forerunners of our current state of the art, there is still a wealth of information at the Lasico site. I almost felt like I was in a museum. For those who missed the original post, here it is.
While I was working on a project about digitizers for Construction Software Review the phone line connected to a quiet place where the once-hectic pace of business had all but ground to a halt.
A stately-sounding gentleman with a thick accent answered the call. I inquired about the digitizers I had seen like the one here and if these were now interfacing with computers. He said they would but then informed me rather nonchalantly that the company had sold the last one a month before. He said the company had Lasico Digitizerbeen founded by German immigrants and that he had been with it for 58 years but that now it was “time to go home.” He talked rather vaguely about earlier survey instruments the company had made since 1929 and how the business changed after the war.
“After the war we branched out and made all kinds of things,” said Maximillian Berktold, vice president for LASICO (Los Angeles Scientific Company). “Our instruments were all mechanical but in the 70s or 80s we went into electronics. But nobody wants to think anymore, they just want to press a button, and that is what it is. We still have quite a few other instruments in stock. No digitizers.”
My mind conjured up a picture of a bespeckled man sitting at one of those old steel desks with a single pendant light hanging low , like they often do over billiard tables. He told me more about automation- “all you do is start your program, put your values in and that’s it.” He said most of the digitizers the company sold were “long arm” digitizers, and those arms were 35 inches long. He said having that arm made the instrument more accurate.
“The Army bought quite a few,” he said. “As a matter of fact we just got two in for repair. When we opened up the processor, and pulled the housing, there was a bees’ nest in there. I called in the girl (who works on them) – she already retired, but when we get a repair she comes in. She jumped up a mile in the air when she opened it. What’s the matter, when they use it they don’t hear the bzzzzz? I took photos and sent them to the guy. No wonder the darn thing doesn’t work.”
According to Maximillian, LASICO closed July 1st. He offered to send a packet of information to me, and did. Thanks Maximillian for the information, and sharing some perspectives on life, and the world as you experienced it. May the coming years truly be golden.
