During World War II, Dr. Kamphoefner spent his time at Harvard in Dr. Fred Terman's Radio Research Lab. When Dr. Terman came to Stanford in the late 1940s, Kamphoefner came with him. Fred became the manager of the Industrial Electronics Lab in 1953. All the high-speed check handling systems for the ERMA project (Bank of America) were designed and developed by Kamphoefner's group. As a part of the project, several check-reading systems were analyzed using optics and magnetics. The winning approach used a stylized character, printed with a magnetic ink. This result, referred to as the Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) approach, was a huge success, allowing very high-speed reading of bank checks with a high degree of accuracy. This technology, developed over 30 years ago, is still used today to process hundreds of millions of bank checks world wide.
While managing his lab of about 50 professionals, Fred continued to promote new business in fields such as automated inspection, nonimpact printing, and character recognition. He established new programs with Recognition Equipment Corporation (handling systems for OCR), Sun Chemical Corporation (inks and toners and, later, new printing systems), and Eli Lilly Corporation (inspection of gelatin capsules). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dr. Kamphoefner recruited a group of very bright young control specialists in modern control theory. This group developed a fine reputation in control theory applied to transportation. Several of this group spun off to form Systems Control, Inc., which became very successful.
In 1984, Fred was named Associate Director of the Advanced Development Division, where working with Dr. Frank Greenman, he was responsible for the general management of seven Laboratories.
Fred left a great legacy to SRI. Not only in the organizational sense—six or seven labs are still active that he help to build—but in the personal and professional sense. Fred was a gentle and encouraging leader who helped his staff to excel.