Thad Floryan cited the following article:
In which we find the following:
| The earliest machines produced distortion during the recording | process which German engineers significantly reduced during the | Nazi era by introducing a high-frequency bias current also used | during playback.
Distortion was the result of magnetic hysteresis. [2] The Germans overcame this problem by adding a high-frequency (above the highest audio signal frequency) bias signal. [3]
| American audio engineer Jack Mullin was a | member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II. His | unit was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics | activities, and in the course of his duties, he acquired two | Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of I.G. Farben recording tape | from a German radio station at Bad Nauheim (near Frankfurt). | He had these shipped home. Over the next two years, he worked to | develop the machines for commercial use, hoping to interest the | Hollywood film studios in using magnetic tape for movie | soundtrack recording. | | Mullin gave a demonstration of his recorders at MGM Studios in | Hollywood in 1947, which led to a meeting with Bing Crosby, who | immediately saw the potential of Mullin's recorders to pre- | record his radio shows. Crosby invested $50,000 in a local | electronics company, Ampex, to enable Mullin to develop a | commercial production model of the tape recorder. Using | Mullin's tape recorders and with Mullin as his chief engineer, | Crosby became the first American performer to master | commercial recordings on tape and the first to regularly pre- | record his radio programs on the medium. Ampex and Mullin | subsequently developed commercial stereo and multitrack audio | recorders, based on the system invented by Ross Snyder of | Ampex Corp...
Surprisingly, that article doesn't mention Alexander M. Poniatoff, the founder of Ampex Corporation. His is an amazing story.
In the 1960s, I was a television broadcast engineer. In 1964, I took a course about the "Ampex Videotape Recorder" taught by Matthew McGillicuddy, the Ampex Training Manager. To this day, I still have the "Certificate of Achievement" awarded at the end of the course. The certificate bears the signatures of McGillicuddy (as Manager, Training) and Poniatoff (as Chairman of the Board, Ampex Corporation).
During the course, someone (possibly McGillicuddy) told us the story of how Poniatoff came to found Ampex. I have tried to reconstruct the story, based on my memory of a narrative I heard 46 years ago with considerable assistance from Wikipedia.
Poniatoff was born in 1892 in what was then the Russian Empire. [4] By
1917, he had been trained as an Electrical Engineer, and was an officer in the Russian army. In February of that year, "White Russian" revolutionary forces overthrew the Czarist government (February Revolution [5]) and established a provisional government. Poniatoff supported the revolution.Before the end of the year, a second revolution (October Revolution [6]), led by Bolshevik Red Guards, overthrew the provisional government and established the Communist government. Poniatoff, along with many other white Russians, fled the country (White emigre [7]). Poniatoff escaped to China, and worked for Shanghai Power Company until 1927, when he emigrated to the United States. During World War II, he worked for General Electric, PG&E, and Dalmo-Victor, specializing in the design and manufacture of motors and generators. [8] In 1944, Poniatoff moved to California and founded Ampex corporation as a motor manufacturer. [9] After the end of World War II, he met the aforementioned Jack Mullin, who provided Poniatoff with access to the technology he had acquired from Germany. Mullin also introduced Poniatoff to Bing Crosby, who invested in Ampex in order to support Poniatoff's efforts to build a magnetic audio tape recorder. Ampex introduced the first commercial audio tape recorder in 1948. [10]
At this point, my narrative ends. Return to [1].
[1] Reel-to-reel audio tape recording. Wikipedia.