John T. "Jack" Mullin (1913–1999) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
pioneer in the field of
magnetic tape sound recordingMagnetic tape has been used for sound recording for more than 75 years. Tape revolutionized both the radio broadcast and music recording industries. It did this by giving artists and producers the power to record and re-record audio with minimal loss in quality as well as edit and rearrange...
and made significant contributions to many other related fields. From his days at
Santa Clara UniversitySanta Clara University is a private, co-educational Jesuit-affiliated university located in Santa Clara, California. Chartered by the state of California and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, it operates in collaboration with the Society of Jesus , whose members founded...
to his death, he displayed a deep appreciation for classical music and an aptitude for electronics and engineering. When he died in 1999, he was buried with a rosary and a reel of magnetic tape. A 2006 documentary movie,
Sound Man: WWII to MP3, was made about his life and contributions to sound recording.
John T. "Jack" Mullin (1913–1999) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
pioneer in the field of
magnetic tape sound recordingMagnetic tape has been used for sound recording for more than 75 years. Tape revolutionized both the radio broadcast and music recording industries. It did this by giving artists and producers the power to record and re-record audio with minimal loss in quality as well as edit and rearrange...
and made significant contributions to many other related fields. From his days at
Santa Clara UniversitySanta Clara University is a private, co-educational Jesuit-affiliated university located in Santa Clara, California. Chartered by the state of California and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, it operates in collaboration with the Society of Jesus , whose members founded...
to his death, he displayed a deep appreciation for classical music and an aptitude for electronics and engineering. When he died in 1999, he was buried with a rosary and a reel of magnetic tape. A 2006 documentary movie,
Sound Man: WWII to MP3, was made about his life and contributions to sound recording.
Mullin's work with the Signal Corps
By 1943, German engineers had developed a high-quality form of magnetic tape sound recording that was unknown elsewhere. The Nazi radio networks used it to broadcast music and propaganda around the clock.
From their monitoring of Nazi radio broadcasts the Allies knew that German radio studios had some new kind of recorder that could reproduce high-fidelity sound in segments of unheard-of length, up to 15 minutes duration. But for several years, they didn't know what these machines were or how they worked, and it was not until Germany fell to the Allies during 1944-45 that the Americans discovered the new magnetic tape recorders. It was Jack Mullin who saw the future potential of the new technology and who developed it immediately after the war.
Mullin served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He was posted to Paris in the final months of the war, where his unit was assigned to find out everything they could about German radio and electronics. They found and collected hundreds of low-quality field dictating machines but the major discovery came when Mullin visited Germany just before the end of the war. He was sent to inspect a site near
FrankfurtFrankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2008 population of 670,000. The urban area had an estimated population of 2.26 million in 2001...
, where the Germans had reputedly been experimenting with using directed high-energy radio beams as means of disabling the ignition systems of flying aircraft.
On his way home, Mullin made a chance stopover at a nearby German radio station at
Bad NauheimBad Nauheim is a town in the Wetteraukreis district of Hesse state of Germany. As of 2004, Bad Nauheim has a population of 30,365. The town is located approximately 35 kilometers north of Frankfurt am Main, on the east edge of the Taunus mountain range...
, which was already in American hands. Here he was given two suitcase-sized
AEGAllgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft is a German producer of electrical equipment founded in 1883 by Emil Rathenau....
'
MagnetophonMagnetophon was the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic tape invention by Fritz Pfleumer...
' high-fidelity recorders and fifty reels of
FarbenI.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...
recording tape. Mullin had them shipped home and over the next two years he worked on the machines constantly, modifying them and improving their performance. His main hope was to interest the Hollywood movie studios in using magnetic tape for movie sound recording.
Demonstration in America
Mullin gave two public demonstrations of his machines in Hollywood in 1947, in which he first presented live music performed behind a curtain, followed by a concealed playback of the performance. Mullen's recorder caused a sensation among American audio professionals and many listeners could not tell the difference between the recorded and live performances. By luck, Mullin's second demonstration was at MGM Studios in Hollywood and in the audience that day was
Bing CrosbyHarry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American popular singer and actor whose career stretched over more than half a century from 1926 until his death....
's technical director,
Murdo MackenzieMurdo Mackenzie was twice manager of the Scots-owned Matador Land and Cattle Company, and founding president of the American Stock Growers Association, for whom he testified before congress and the Interstate Commerce Commission...
. Mackenzie arranged for Mullin to meet Crosby, and in June 1947 Crosby was given a demonstration of Mullin's magnetic tape recorders.
Crosby was impressed by the amazing sound quality and instantly saw the huge commercial potential of the new machines. Up to this time, most pre-recorded programming such as serials and drama were produced on disc, but live music was the standard for American radio at the time and radio networks tightly restricted the use of music on disc because of the comparatively poor sound quality.
Crosby, who was arguably the biggest star on radio at the time, was very receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs. He disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. He had already asked the NBC network to let him pre-record his 1944-45 series on transcription discs, but the network refused, so Crosby had withdrawn from live radio for a year and returned for the 1946-47 season only reluctantly.
Crosby realised that Mullin's tape recording technology would enable him to pre-record his radio show with a sound quality that equalled live broadcasts, that these tapes could be edited precisely, and replayed many times with no appreciable loss of quality. Mullin was asked to tape one show as a test; it was a complete success and Mullin was immediately hired as Crosby's chief engineer to pre-record the rest of the series.
Crosby became the first major music star to master commercial recordings on tape, and the first to use tape to pre-record radio broadcasts. The shows were painstakingly edited to give them a pace and flow that was wholly unprecedented in radio. Mullin has claimed that he even pioneered the use of "canned laughter" -- at the insistence of Crosby's writer
Bill MorrowWilliam Phillip Morrow is a U.S. Republican politician from the state of California, who used to be in the California State Senate representing the 38th district which includes northern San Diego County and the cities of San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano in southern Orange County.-Early...
, he inserted a segment of raucous laughter from an earlier show to follow a joke in a later show that hadn't worked well.
Keen to make use of the new recorders as soon as possible, Crosby invested $50,000 in a local electronics firm,
AmpexAmpex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence. At one time public, Ampex is currently a privately held company.- Origins :Alexander M...
, and the tiny six-man concern soon became the world leader in the development of tape recording. Ampex revolutionised the radio and recording industry with its famous Model 200 tape deck, developed directly from Mullin's modified Magnetophones. Crosby gave one of the first production models to musician
Les PaulLester William Polsfuss — known as Les Paul — was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible"...
, which led directly to Paul's invention of
multitrack recordingMultitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole. This is the most common method of recording popular music...
.
Working with Mullin, Ampex rapidly developed two-track stereo and then three-track recorders. Spurred on by Crosby's move into TV in the early 1950s, Mullin and Ampex developed a working monochrome videotape recorder by 1950 and a color video recorder by 1954, both created to tape Crosby's TV shows.
Through the rest of his life, Mullin continued to follow new ideas. He also kept an impressive collection of early recording hardware, which is now at the
Pavek Museum of BroadcastingThe Pavek Museum of Broadcasting is a museum in St. Louis Park, Minnesota which has one of the world's most significant collections of vintage radio and television equipment. It originated in the collection of Joe Pavek, who began squirreling away unique radios while he was an instructor at...
.
See also
- John Herbert Orr
John Herbert Orr was an Alabama entrepreneur who formed Orradio Industries, Inc., a high-technology firm that made magnetic recording tape. In 1945, Orr was among the U.S. Army Intelligence officials who investigated this technology, which was originally developed in Germany during the 1930s....
- Another American magnetic tape pioneer
- Richard H. Ranger
Richard Howland Ranger was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of John Hilliard and Emily Anthen Gillet Ranger, He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I, earning the rank of Major. After the war, he attended the...
- Another American magnetic tape pioneer
External links