Origins and Early Years

In 1924, physicists John Clarence Karcher and Eugene B. McDermott opened Geophysical Research Corporation as part of Amerada Petroleum. They made equipment to help locate and extract the petroleum resources then being developed in the southwestern United States. Six years later, the pair relocated to Dallas and created the independent Geophysical Service, Incorporated (GSI). They opened a laboratory at New Jersey and hired businessman J. Erik Jonsson to lead it.

GSI built equipment to facilitate oil exploration. This photograph from the 1930s shows a work crew using a GSI buggy marsh to record seismographic data after detonating water and mud in southern Louisiana.

GSI settled in Dallas in the 1930s. In 1934, GSI’s laboratory at Newark, New Jersey came to Dallas. The company’s warehouse appears here around that time.

Shown here in 1948, GSI’s electronic production shop on Lemmon Avenue produced geophysical devices and, increasingly, military equipment.

Four major figures in the early history of Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI) became pivotal to the development of Texas Instruments: J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil H. Green, Eugene McDermott, and J.C. Karcher. This image was taken in 1957, when Jonsson chaired the board of Texas Instruments, Green served as a vice president, and McDermott led the executive committee.

Texas Instruments issued its first common stock in 1953. The company gave this certificate to J. Erik Jonsson.