Carl Titus came to SRI in 1949 as employee number 89; he was one of Jesse Hobson’s colleagues from Armour Research Foundation. In 1951 he was put in charge of the Associates Program, which was set up to obtain equity capital for SRI from companies that would become Associates of SRI and be given special access to SRI research findings. Titus’s involvement followed a speech by David Sarnoff at the Fairmont Hotel on November 14, 1951, in which Sarnoff enthusiastically presented the need for industry to support organizations like SRI to enable industry to stay in touch with research: “{SRI} is important not just because it has fine laboratories and able researchers, which it certainly has, but because it is an outstanding example of the natural partnership between research and industry.”
At the end of 1952, the cumulative total from the Associates Program was $783,000, with an additional $375,000 in pledges. The program was already a success and it was clear that the $1.5 million goal would be achieved. The importance of the first $783,000 of Associates’ support cannot be over-emphasized. It literally made the difference between a financially strapped organization and one with some financial security. Fred Kamphoefner recalls seeing a financial report at one point that showed the net worth of the Institute to be about the same as the total dollars that had been raised by the Associates Program. The program also led to important research relationships: by the end of 1955, at least 73 of the first 100 Associates had become clients of SRI. Fred recalls that “in my laboratory in the sixties, 85% of our contracts were for SRI Associates.”
Many played a role in getting new companies into the Associates Program, but it was Carl Titus who saw to it that all went along in an orderly way. He was well liked by our Associates and did an excellent job in a quiet way. He left SRI in 1971. As Hoot Gibson said in his book, “More credit is due him than has ever been recognized in a lasting way. He was our equity capital man.”