Stephen Jatras Collection

Stephen Jatras was born in McKeesport, PA in 1927. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1947 and a master’s in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1952. Jatras worked at the Lockheed Corporation and Midwestern Instruments before joining Telex in 1965. In 1966 he was appointed President and in 1981 elected chairman. While at Telex he designed an interface for a tape drive to plug into an IBM computer, becoming the first non-IBM drive and pioneering the plug-to-plug peripheral business. Jatras became vice chairman of Memorex-Telex when in 1987 Telex partnered with Memorex. Jatras always maintained a relationship with Carnegie Mellon. He was a lifetime trustee of Carnegie Mellon and co-chaired the ECE Advisory Board from its inception in 1992. He was awarded the Carnegie Mellon Alumni Association's Merit and Service Awards and, in 1995, the Andrew Carnegie Philanthropic Award, in recognition of his generosity to the university. In 1997 he endowed his faculty chair in the ECE Department. Jatras passed away in 2000.