Rev. 11/10/00
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A Brief History of Tempo Research Corporation
In August 1984, a small San Diego based company, Tempo Research Corporation,
began designing, developing, manufacturing, and marketing copper cable fault locators
for the telecommunications industry. As time progressed, it became evident that fiber
optics would replace copper wire. Despite the growing talk about fiber optics, Tempo
believed that copper was not going to go away as quickly as some people thought and
decided to stay focused on the copper market where Tempo had the most expertise.
Dedicated to “Finding a better way”, research lead to the development of a reliable hand
held test instrument that is used by every major telephone company in the United States
today to troubleshoot twisted pair applications. It has also become the technicians’ test
set of choice worldwide – the Sidekick
®
.
The Evolution of the Sidekick
Origin of the Name
The Sidekick’s name originated from its characteristics and features. The word
Side
came from the ability to carry or hook the test instrument on the side of a technician’s
tool belt. The word
Kick
was inherited from a common telephony practice whereby the
length of a wire in a pair, or a pair of wires, could be determined from their capacitive
discharge. The practice of “Kicking the pair” was greatly enhanced by two of the
Sidekick’s most powerful troubleshooting features, the “Leakage Test” and the patented
“Stress Test”.
The Original Sidekick 7A
In January 1991, Tempo Research Corporation released the first Sidekick 7A. It was a
compact Volt Ohm Meter designed specifically for telephone companies, but it had one
additional feature called a “Noise Test” that would catapult this unknown instrument into
a valuable telecommunications industry product. The
Noise Test utilized an entirely new patented method of
testing the voice grade of a circuit. It induced a 90 dBrnC
signal on top of 135 Volts DC into a copper wire pair
instead of using methods that depended on the presence of
ambient noise. The sum affect was to stress a telephone
cable pair to the limit and see if voice grade quality could
be sustained without the presence of “Noise” on the line.
Other test equipment at this time performed passive
testing for noise and balance which didn’t always reveal
faults. This new test allowed technicians to measure a
telephone pair’s ability to carry a voice signal without
noise interference under worst-case noise conditions.
Even minor fault readings were detectable on pairs,
otherwise, thought to be good. One hundred Sidekicks were produced and sold before
the revised Sidekick 7A was manufactured later that year.