Yet another story. I first heard the name QUALCOMM when a rep from Schneider Transport of Green Bay, WI made a presentation of some truck tracking thing called Omnitracks.
That was ignored until one day a guy from Bechtel called at my office on the college campus. He wanted to lease land for the installation of a cell tower for something called cdma that both Primco and Verizon were about to launch. I'm basically a pail and shovel investor so I asked who had the technolgy behind this effort---again that name QUALCOMM.
I did a little research and found that an Irwin Jacobs was the driving force. In that era in the Midwest the name Irwin Jacobs was not held in the highest esteem.
Here is a current excerpt;
"At his fiercest, corporate raider Irwin L. Jacobs, a member of The Forbes 400 richest Americans from 1986 to 1988, terrorized chief executives, forcing them to either fix their problems or sell them off--to him, if possible. He bought stakes in Kaiser Steel, Walt Disney, Borg-Warner and Pabst Brewing, financing his predations with his own cash, then selling for a quick profit."
I dismissed investing in anything run by Irwin Jacobs. A bit later I was on a flight to San Diego and read a Gilder article in Forbes. I finally noted the difference between Irwin L. and Irwin M. At a stop at LAX enroute to SD, I got off the plane, called my broker and made my first QCOM purchase. The rest is history, Crazy Days of 99, early retirement, and a secure future. Thank you Irwin M. Jacobs.
As we are speaking of old timers recall some of early SI QCOM posters===Craig Schilling, Phil Merryman, Chris Reeder (qdog), Harvey Rosenkrantz, Ramsey Su and even (no name provided).
RonM---first posted #650 on the original thread.
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