Founder of Miniscribe in 1980, an early manufacturer of 5.25-inch and later 3.5-inch drives, Johnson was a pioneer in disk storage products.
Born in Ogden, Utah, Johnson graduated from high school in 1953. He began college, but then enlisted in the Navy and served for four years as an electronics technician. He got out of the Navy in 1958 and entered the University of Utah, graduating in 1961 with a degree in Electrical Engineering.
He received job offers from Control Data and IBM. Johnson went to work for aerospace company Hercules Power Company for a year and then went to UC Berkeley, where he obtained his Master's Degree. His career included engineering and management roles in magnetic recording at IBM and Memorex, and he then developed the "SuperDisk" along with his co-workers. The SuperDisk was a high-end, rotary actuator drive program.
He founded Miniscribe in 1980, an early manufacturer of 5.25-inch and later 3.5-inch drives. Johnson founded PrairieTek in 1986 and was a co-founder of CoData. In 1992, Conner Peripherals and Alps purchased the PrairieTek patent portfolio for $18 million in a bankruptcy auction.
PrairieTek became the fastest growing company in American history. Compaq bought 90% of Conner's drive output in 1987, the first year of production. Conner sales went from $10 million in Q1-1987, to $30 million in Q2, and finished 1987 at over $113 million, then over $256 million in 1988. Conner reached $1.337 billion in sales within four years, a record growth for a startup.
