Hess, Richard L.

Historical Background

The Richard Hess Mullin-Palmer Tape Restoration Project Collection chronicles the widespread dissemination of one of the most important advances in sound recording technology: magnetic recording on tape. In 1945, a U.S. Army Signal Corp soldier named John T. "Jack" Mullin was assigned to recover examples of the latest German technology from the field. In a radio station, Mullin confirmed that the Germans had developed a system of sound recording and reproduction using paper and plastic tape. He returned to the United States with several reels of audio tape and two AEG Magnetophon brand reel-to-reel machines on which to play them. This was not the first time that this country was introduced to the technology (in fact, research was published widely in the 30s), but Mullin's initiative, along with the enterprise of filmmaker Bill Palmer, was essentially the avenue by which tape manufacturing began in the United States.

...