Jack Mullin
| Jack Mullin | |
|---|---|
| Born |
John Thomas Mullin October 5, 1913 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Died | June 24, 1999 (aged 85) Camarillo, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Heart failure |
| Alma mater | Santa Clara University |
| Occupation | Electrical engineer |
John Thomas "Jack" Mullin (October 5, 1913 – June 24, 1999) was an American pioneer in the field of magnetic tape sound recording and made significant contributions to many other related fields. From his days at Santa Clara University 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.
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 during World War II, 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. Mullin saw the potential of the new technology and developed it immediately after the war.
Mullin served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II. 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 Frankfurt, 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 back home to San Francisco, Mullin made a chance stopover at a nearby German radio station at Bad Nauheim, which was already in American hands. Here he was given two suitcase-sized AEG 'Magnetophon' high-fidelity recorders and 50 reels of Farben 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.
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